


the last meadowlarks

by melforbes



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Dark Academia, Dark Academia AU, i cannot possibly be the first person to tag something with dark academia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-25
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:27:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 33,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21555481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melforbes/pseuds/melforbes
Summary: After transferring to Silverleaf College, Hannibal Lecter chooses fellow student Bedelia du Maurier as his next kill, but as he learns more about Bedelia, he finds that her secrets may be even darker than his own. Dark Academia AU
Relationships: Bedelia Du Maurier/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 19
Kudos: 41





	1. Bedelia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i tend to pair things i write with playlists, so i'll link this one's [here](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA5tKk8qL2mjGGrocMHQfgPaG90nhA1n2).

His apartment on the edge of campus, a single crosswalk reaching from the main entrance of the college to his front door and a maple tree marking his territory in comparison to theirs, was a one-bedroom with all that he needed: a writing desk in the main room positioned right in front of the white-curtained window, a pile of books next to the radiator, and a half-broken bedframe with a queen-sized mattress in the bedroom. The curtains had been there when he moved in, as well as the colander in the cabinets and the slow cooker he never intended to use. Though he thought about purchasing a record player - he craved a chance to listen to “Lacrimosa” while writing - he detested the space such a thing would occupy, wanted only books to be on his floor. Once a week, he sent his clothes out to be laundered, and when he returned home from his office hours, he would find his plastic-wrapped shirts, pants, and blazers hanging from his doorhandle, perfectly safe in this New England town, his landlord a little woman in her seventies who had three cats and kept her rabbit-eared television on all day, humming muffled daytime television through the building, waking up the wood, pipes, and wiring. If he offered to help her with technological troubles, she would dock his rent for the month. He liked her in the way that he liked certain people: they were recognizable enough to be in his thoughts but far enough away from his thoughts to be irrelevant to him. In other words, he wouldn’t kill her.

And he wouldn’t kill the boy in his class on Dostoevsky, someone who slid copied notes his way after he conspicuously missed class; in a world of such competitive egos, there was much to respect about a charitable gesture. He wouldn’t kill his next-door neighbors even though they had sex too loud and at suspicious times during the day - six in the morning, two in the afternoon, sometimes just before noon though he wasn’t often home to witness it - for they spared him sugar for his tea whenever he asked. He killed the girl in his multivariate calculus lecture because she wouldn’t stop talking, kept her loins in his freezer behind a shield of green peas, and he killed the groundskeeper who would use his pockets for their medieval purpose whenever pretty girls left the library late at night, and now it was November. Given the meat, the frequency, the size of this little rural town, he could afford at most one kill per month, and then no more than four, perhaps five, during each semester; though the calculus girl would still feed him plenty more meals, he needed a new target, a new muse. Last night, he saw a fellow student playing the piano in the Vinchy Commons, her fingers sprawling across the upright’s keys, pale pink polish, wiry hands, and he wondered if he might sit beside her, befriend her, invite her into the woods for a swift little walk, but then she turned away and stood when who he presumed was her boyfriend returned; the boy took her satchel and slung it across his body, then held her hand and led her out of the Commons, presumably heading home for the evening. In the end she was never that appealing anyway, but there was a charm to it, how she could play the instrument, how she was more than merely a student because she did more than just read, write, and think. Maybe he hadn’t even wanted to kill her at all. Maybe it had been just a little spit of a crush.

And now, he was in Latin watching as the professor - drab, dull, boring, his clothes seemingly the same each day but changing in minute ways, grey plaid swapped with grey herringbone, belt one shade darker of brown - wrote text across the board, spelled out something simple at the start of the lesson, a warmup. At the professor’s insistence, the class sat in a horseshoe configuration, their gazes sideways at the professor, their notebooks and fountain pens sitting atop their little desks. The carpet in this room was red, and beneath the chalkboard, dust pooled, an eternal stain, the professor rubbed off a mistake using the sleeve of his blazer, the leaded windows beckoned those who couldn’t stand Latin out to the post-autumnal landscape, the last of the leaves having fallen the weekend of Halloween, the first of the snow yet to come. From here, he had a view of the marble-colored chapel across the street, a place for the more religious students to congregate on weekends, maybe a good place to look for his next target. 

“Your translation is incorrect,” another student said, and then, he found her. 

In October he heard the calculus girl say something similar, _that isn’t right, you’re not right, that’s not the right variable._ And half of the time she was actually incorrect, the professor having been right the whole time, but she never let that deter her from speaking up. But this woman - he checked what was written on the board, then double-checked because his Latin was poor nowadays - was clearly correct, the mistake basic for an undergraduate but atrocious for a doctor of the subject, amateur in a staggering way. Unless he had been looking for such a mistake, Hannibal doubted he would have found this one, but the woman across from him in the horseshoe had seen it in an instant, the rest of the fall-fevered class suddenly alert at her declaration, attention coming back to the red room.

And she had the marble features of a statue in the college’s small gallery, tall but not too tall, standing alongside her he would feel her equal, and she wore a pink cashmere sweater that clashed with the carpet but made her seem as if she were fancier and more ornate than this room, as if the carpet should be embarrassed for picking such a color for today. She crossed her legs beneath her desk, camel-colored mini-skirt stretching across her lap, the swing coat hung on a wall hook behind her matching its color. Her ivory patent leather pumps shimmered in the old light of the college, a newfangled diamond, and the pearl earrings she wore showed wealth but not excess, pride and opulence but not conceit. She held the confidence of someone with money but the ego of someone who had worked tirelessly toward her own academic achievement. When she corrected the professor, she did so for the man’s benefit, an ultimately kind gesture, whereas the calculus girl had just wanted to make herself look intelligent even if she lacked the intellect to support such an appearance. This woman, in contrast, was unquestionably intelligent, and the rest of the class would believe that wholeheartedly even if she chose not to speak in class for the remainder of the semester.

Of course he’d noticed her before, but she had been put to the back of his mind like his landlord, like his neighbors, like the Dostoevsky boy, for she didn’t pose a threat to anyone. Sweater sets, kitten heels, an array of fashionable coats, she was a smart, rich girl, probably from Connecticut, probably paying the tuitions of several other students at this college, and she kept a Jane Austen novel - well-loved, the pages ripped and written upon, as much a comfort as a sparring partner - in her handbag, one that was designer but not obviously so. Though she was attractive, there were plenty of other girls like her, or so he thought, for those other girls like her, they would spend the weekends driving to Boston or New York, taking in theatre or going with their rich boyfriends to expensive restaurants, posing for pictures while sticking out their tongues and drinking to excess. He had written this woman off on appearances alone. He would need to scold himself for that.

And the professor corrected the line, and she looked down at her notes, acted as if the professor’s mistake wasn’t a big deal, and he wanted to memorize the curve of her jaw, the bob of her neck as she swallowed. She must have curled her hair, and her lipstick was a natural shade of nude, but he doubted she was wearing any makeup on her face, thought her skin must be pale throughout the year no matter how much sun she had. She was beautiful. He thought of her cast in lantern light in the woods, stars bright above them because they were far from civilization, the spreading of deep red blood across her beautiful pale neck. He wanted to grip her wrist and walk with her. If he chose to savor her, then he would invite her to dinner at the inn, the best nearby place for a meal, and he would court her in the way she deserved before bringing her to her end. He would cherish her, if only for a little while. He would prove to her that it was an honor to kill her.

At the end of class, he stayed in his seat and watched from his peripheries as she capped her pen, closed her notebook, pushed her hair behind her ears after she brought both items back into her bag. He watched as she pulled on her coat, tied its sash at her waist, slid on a pair of black leather gloves. What if it was raining when she left the classroom? She would fight off the pouring by holding one hand over her head, ducking into an academic buildings, maybe waiting out the storm; he could smell the scent of wet wool coming off of her coat in the imagining, pictured her looking up at him as he offered, _would you like me to give you a ride home?_ What if she shared an apartment with two roommates, both women? And their bathroom would reek of burning hair, straighteners and curlers, dryers and clips and hairspray and gels, and she would ask if he would like some coffee to warm up with, then apologize because the only milk in the house was skim. If it snowed instead, he would clear a path so that she wouldn’t ruin her little shoes, and then she would thank him by shaking his hand. What would it feel like to shake her hand? He doubted she would bother to remove her gloves. He thought her skin beneath must be so soft.

And he followed behind her as she left the classroom, as she ducked out into the quadrangle, as she headed for the Dietz, a stone building across the walkway in which students would find the cafeteria, various professor and student offices, and Galway Commons. He couldn’t follow her that far, at least not yet, but it was the first week of November, so he had plenty of time to get to know her. No, he would wait until their next Latin class to speak to her, asking for help on a question he genuinely didn’t understand, and he would ask, would you like to look over this while we have lunch together? But it wouldn’t be a big invitation, for most students ate lunch on campus; he would pay on her behalf and claim it was his form of thanks, and he would watch her eat a sandwich with cucumber, cream cheese, and lox as she explained Latin to him, and he would drink his hot tea and listen wholeheartedly. And then he hoped she would offer her phone number, just in case he had any more questions. 

Before she left the classroom, the professor called her over, two to three syllables depending on the person pronouncing her name, two and a half in this case, _Bedelia?_ He called her over, and he thanked her for mentioned the mistake, said he didn’t know why he hadn’t seen it, and she smiled sympathetically, an honest mistake, she hoped he hadn’t felt as if his authority was threatened. And he smiled, said he was glad to stay humble, commended her again for catching the mistake, said he appreciated having her in class. And meanwhile, Hannibal repeated her name over and over again.

_Bedelia. Bedelia. Bedelia._

* * *

Silverleaf College was built in the 1800s, and many students claimed that the heating and water systems hadn’t been updated since, for the place was notoriously cold in the winter and sweltering in May and August, the radiators spitting steam at anyone who dared sit too close, whether or not a sink would give water a gambling question each day. But the buildings had been carved from beautiful stone and built in fashionable gothic architecture, the first-year residence sporting leaded windows and thick walls, the standard-issue furniture mahogany-colored and scratched. They called the freshmen building _the castle,_ a joke but not a true one, the building resembling cathedrals and the homes of European royals even if the plumbing indoors failed more often than not and even if the building kept students cold all winter. The only contrasting building on the campus was the Daniels Library, a big white building with gold-toned accents, Greek columns resting at the top of the front steps, the place a beacon of light to the few students of the college; there were plenty of study rooms inside, desks lining every wall, and the book collection was so extensive that the lazier students could avoid purchasing textbooks altogether. On the third floor, there was a nook that looked out at the Scholar’s Garden, a place full of medicinal herbs and beautiful flowers, the final bit of beauty right before the student residences and then the deep woods behind those buildings; he liked to sit at a certain desk on the third floor and do his readings for his classes, looking out at the garden when he needed a momentary break, watching as the leaves changed through September and fell at the end of October. 

Across the street from his building was the great archway and gate leading into the college, the old motorcar paths now turned into walkways for students, no vehicles allowed on campus anymore. The ornate iron gates sprawled between gilded stone walls inscribed with their date of erection - a freshmen year joke that he’d quickly tired of - showed the boundary between the college and the world beyond; his favorite bit of irony was the Quik Chek two buildings down from his home, a few meters away from the grand _Silverleaf College_ sign and the biggest entrance to the school. Though setting foot inside of the campus brought students and faculty back in time, leaving campus came with the tireless reminder: the things beyond those walls, though they were beautiful and intriguing, were not truly real. No matter how long he sat in the library and stared out at the Scholar’s Garden, he would still come home to find bills slipped underneath his door, rent and electric due on the same day, some kind of cosmic joke. But he could immerse himself in this environment each day, dipping into old texts and handwriting his essays, telling his classmates in upper level sociology that he would be reading in the Vinchy Commons for a few hours if they would like to stop by and ask him to answer a question. Though most students preferred Galway Commons, one building over and on the first floor along with the east campus cafeteria, he preferred the quiet of Vinchy, where only sparse dark-wooden tables covered the burgundy carpet, where the walls were lined with cloth-bound books and the long windows gave a beautiful view of the gilded library. Now that the weather had cooled down, attendants had begun to light candles on the windowsills in Vinchy, and he loved to sit in there for hours making his way through his work, writing whole papers and studying for his weeks-away calculus exam while he took in the environment that surrounded him. But still, there came a time for him to go home, and he would cook rosemary steak with white wine, spend hours on a risotto, and though there was something beautiful about his quaint apartment, he would look out his window above the kitchen sink, see part of the Silverleaf gate, and yearn to return to campus, stay just a little bit longer.

Because there had been suspicions at his previous college in Massachusetts, he had transferred for this semester to Silverleaf, the college having accepted all of his credits and asking in return only that he complete a few introductory courses to support his degree and provide office hours for a freshmen course; otherwise, he would never have bothered taking Latin, for he greatly preferred for the language to be masked in intrigue, not like Italian or German, not like languages he could learn and use while traveling, not like languages that are still spoken today. No, he wished Latin could remain a mystery, but the class now intrigued him more, for a beautiful woman sat on the opposite side of the classroom, the light from the leaded windows illuminating her golden hair, the thick material of her sweater stimulating. He wished he could run his palms down her cashmere-clad shoulders, mentally labeling each bone, muscle, tendon, and ligament he passed as he did so. She must have felt so soft. He could picture them together at the homecoming games that this college didn’t have, her in a mini-skirt and sweater that matched the silver and emerald school colors, him standing behind and wrapping his arms around her, paying more attention to her than to the game. And then, he imagined asking her to go to the woods with him, surely to make out or maybe even have sex, he didn’t know those corners of her mind yet, and he could kill her there, bleed her into the river in hope of leaving minimal evidence. Yes, he wanted to kill her; as he sat in class, he looked at her pale neck and imagined running the blade of a freshly sharpened knife across it, spilling hot blood upon her milky skin.

When class was dismissed, he watched again as she packed up each of her things, her notebook bookmarked and folded closed, her pen capped and the two brought into her handbag, her camel coat draping over her shoulders, her hands reaching underneath the neck of the coat in order to free her hair. The way she pulled on her leather gloves, there was something so enchanting about it, spreading her fingers, stretching out the material. Because he wished not to unnerve her, he waited a few seconds before leaving the classroom, then watched as she walked along the cobbled pathways, crossing in between other students as the classes changed. She was heading toward the Dietz Building, probably about find an open armchair in Galway Commons and make her way through the readings for her class in nineteenth century literature - he was guessing - and he thought, maybe an afternoon espresso in the cafeteria would be nice. When he entered the building, she was already heading into the common area, the plush couches in front taken as always, the golden floral wallpaper shimmering while the fireplace on the wall opposite of him crackled on. She went to an overstuffed chair by the window, shed her coat, and pulled her notebook, pen, and copy of _The Master and Margarita_ from her handbag, ready to annotate. 

And he decided against the coffee, went back out the way he came in and left her to her book, scolding himself for following her at all. Though he knew that the things he did would terrify and anger others, he only saw himself as a threat to the world in moments like these, when he found himself too close to a mark and knew that in some way he could scare them. Even with the calculus girl, he gave her a quick death, broke her neck, no pain whatsoever. Psychopathy, sociopathy, whatever one chose to call it, didn’t mean that he lacked morals, and those morals told him that following a woman around a college campus, even if she was going from a class they shared to the most popular room at the school, was wrong. He wouldn’t do it again.

But as he started walking home, he found himself wishing he would have found a seat near her, maybe asked about the book she was reading. He liked her mini skirts, some solid in color and others, like today’s, pleated and patterned. He liked that she only sparingly spoke up in class, her questions relevant and helpful for the other students, her comments insightful and interesting. He liked that she put a ribbon around the ponytail she wore on Wednesday. He thought that if he were to start speaking to her, he would find himself unable to stop, enraptured by her, asking more and more questions because he was desperate to know her answers. How do you take your tea? Which book is your favorite? Why are you taking Latin? Do you own a record player? I haven’t got one, and I’ve been searching for a way to listen to Mozart’s “Lacrimosa” for a while now. Could we listen to it together? But if he warmed to her too much, then she would be horrified when he decided to hurt her, would be in pain as she died, and his morals were strongly against such pain. But maybe one question wouldn’t hurt. Maybe, if she just so happened to be in the cafeteria at the same time as him, he could ask her how the homework was going for her, and he could introduce himself. _Hannibal Lecter,_ he would say, holding out his right hand, meeting her gaze, _it’s a pleasure to meet you,_ and she would take his hand, shake once and strongly, and say, _Bedelia._

He unlocked his apartment door and shed his coat, hanging it on its usual hook and turning the overhead lights on. Outside, the maple tree next to his building had lost all of its leaves, the branches bare and vulnerable to the coming snow of the season; November’s chill had had him hovering by his radiator, trying to keep warm despite his many outside walls. He didn’t have decorations in his apartment, no houseplants or tacked-up pictures, and as he sat down at the writing desk, he looked out at the blankness and wondered why he hadn’t bothered to move in more. Had this been just a waystation for him? His pots and pans were secondhand, and not even the kind of secondhand that outweighed anything new, like a good enameled dutch oven or a cast iron skillet. No, he had used nonstick pans and a slow cooker and cooking wine and only dried herbs from the grocery store. At another point in his life, he had been one for decadence, but now he owned four pieces of furniture - or maybe just three, depending on whether or not his mattress counted - and ate for sustenance, not for pleasure. Maybe his interest in Bedelia came from that, from the lack of excitement in his life. Maybe he needed to regain the passions he had left at his previous college in Massachusetts, where he sold his car in cash in order to pawn off the evidence on someone else and where he killed too recklessly to stay. Maybe he didn’t need to kill her. 

And there was a play tonight at the theatre downtown, and though the walking distance was further than he thought was ideal, he could walk there nonetheless. Despite the play being a small-town rendition of _Arsenic and Old Lace,_ and though the downtown area was little more than ten angled parking spaces and a laundromat, the least crowded Department of Motor Vehicles in the country, a small chain grocery store, and the historical inn half a mile down the road, this was still a play in a downtown nonetheless. Bad art was better than no art, even if he cringed at the thought. Tonight, he would go see a play, and next weekend, he would do something similar, maybe take a bus to New York and buy tickets for the ballet, maybe hike one of the nearby mountains, then look down at the valley below him in awe. And after he had done all of that, after he had found himself despite all of the changes in his life, he would seek out a new subject to kill.

The walk to the play that evening had him hunching inside of his coat, the wind nipping at his exposed skin, the November air frigid. When he entered the playhouse, their electric heating surrounded him like a duvet fresh from the dryer, warm and engulfing, calming. Like all Silverleaf students, he could receive discounts on most things in the downtown area, so his ticket was only four dollars, not ten, but the price markdown meant that he didn’t get to select his own seat for the show, that he would be put into the awkward seats with poor views like all of the other Silverleaf students. Nonetheless, he was thankful for the ticket, thankful for this rickety building with aging rafters, the wooden walls worn with age, the bar at which intermission refreshments would be served scarred from flasks in the fifties and onward. This was a place where the red velvet curtains had been hand-stitched decades ago, where the now-defunct box seating had been intended for congressmen and rich seasonal travelers on the once-a-decade chance that such people would come by, the stage itself tilted forward in a way that would unnerve ballet dancers and cause unskilled actors to trip. Upstage and downstage, places like this theatre made those classical words true.

And he was at the left end of a row in the middle section of seats, the house surprisingly full for such a rural place on a Friday night. A few rows in front of him, the boy from Dostoevsky sat, and though Hannibal considered saying hello, Dostoevsky was talking to another boy, someone similar in age but taller and more broad-shouldered, the empty seat to Dostoevsky’s left implying that they were waiting for a friend, so Hannibal didn’t bother. The lights flickered; the director of the play stepped onto the curtained stage, hoped to say a few words before the performance began - please silence all cell phones, please do not park in front of the laundromat, refreshments will be served midway through the performance - and as the director was winding up their remarks, Hannibal heard the telltale sound of heeled shoes descending the steps of the theatre, someone finding their seat at the last possible moment. And then, the person walked in front of him, wedged into the aisle seat next to Dostoevsky and his friend. Golden curls, the same v-neck sweater and herringbone mini skirt from class today, the same little diamond earrings.

“Sorry,” Bedelia huffed to Dostoevsky and his friend, “I couldn’t leave campus.”

“Cat got your tongue, Beddie?” Dostoevsky smiled impishly, teasing her as if he were her brother.

“It appears that I have to solve all of your problems for you,” she said, then sighed, settling into her seat and starting to ignore the two boys. “Whatever.”

And as the curtain rose, Hannibal watched her, not the actors on the stage.


	2. The Inn

“Since when do you drink beer?”

Dostoevsky was chastising Bedelia again as half of the house lazed through the reception area in the theatre. While he held a glass of shitty Pinot Grigio, Bedelia tipped back a stout, wincing at the taste. 

The reception area was fashioned to look like an old barn, the rough and exposed wood walls and the high ceilings adding a rustic allure. The long windows across the room and the glass doors were surrounded with small twinkle lights to add light to the dim space, and throughout the room, there were little tables with chairs set up at which theatre-goers could sit down and chat while sharing cookies or beverages served at the scuffed old bar. Sitting at a corner table, peering at them from between other sociable playgoers, Hannibal watched how she swallowed with distaste, somehow still elegant despite the grimace. She really was pretty. 

“Since that doesn’t get me drunk,” she said, nodding toward Dostoevsky’s little wineglass. “And I would like to be drunk.”

“Lightweight,” Dostoevsky teased. He was short for a man but taller than Bedelia, and he wore good leather shoes, handmade, modern and fashionable but understated and undeniably European; his blazer was fitted to his shoulders as if custom-made, and though what he wore wasn’t too dressy for this small town theatre, he still flaunted wealth and status in what he wore. His straw-colored hair was too long, all the way down to his chin, but it fell on his face in a flattering way that would make other men wonder if they could wear the same style. Of course, he was clean-shaven and smelling of perhaps too much cologne, though one would need to walk by him again to determine whether or not that was true.

Hannibal wondered if Dostoevsky might be Bedelia's brother. If she had a sibling at school, then she wouldn’t fit well in his freezer, and that thought was enough to make Hannibal stand up and walk toward the two of them, the other man with the group paying for a glass of red wine in Canadian coins, asking if that was alright. 

“If you put me through something like that again,” Bedelia said, fist choking the rust-colored beer bottle, “then I’ll put you through worse.”

“Oh, come on. Was it really so bad?”

She looked to him and gave something between an eye-roll and a death glare, expressive enough to shake most to their core, but Dostoevsky shook his head, took a sip, had none of it.

“I’m _so_ scared,” he said, then finished his wine and reached out to take from his buddy’s now-filled Canadian-funded glass.

The buddy was taller than Dostoevsky, thin but not lanky, and he wore a red tie, a button-down shirt, and a worn-in leather belt. Though Dostoevsky had developed pushing his hair back over his ears as a personality trait, the buddy had cut-twice-a-month dark brown curls that made him look like a comforting combination of a well-established lawyer making partner early at his firm and a friend’s kind, animal-loving father. He was the type to apologize while purchasing two-dollar wine, but Hannibal had seen the glint of protectiveness in his eyes when Dostoevsky chastised Bedelia, how the buddy liked Dostoevsky enough but would be all too willing to help Bedelia make Dostoevsky feel scared. While the two men bickered about alcohol, about pocket change and currency exchanges and _oh Canada, the land I call my home,_ Dostoevsky’s singing voice was surprisingly deep and clear, Hannibal went to stand alongside Bedelia, wanted to reach out for her hand as a greeting but decided against such a thing. Too familiar. 

“Hello,” he said, the word awkward. This was why he never approached his subjects beforehand. What exactly made her so different? “I believe we’re in the same Latin class.”

Looking up at him, she jogged her memory, then realized, yes, he was the one across the room from her, quiet, didn’t ask many questions during the lectures but sometimes pulled the professor aside afterward because he didn’t want to waste other students’ time.

“Yes,” she said, “right. With Hollingshead.”

“Yes.”

“That class puts me to sleep.”

She took a sip of her beer, not enjoying the taste but still seeking out a buzz. 

“I think he wants the subject to be boring,” she lamented, “and I realize that it’s Latin, it’s not in popular culture anymore, but isn’t there a way to at least somewhat engage students?”

“It’s certainly bland,” he said, cursing himself as he spoke. Why did he sound as if he’d never spoken to another person before? Maybe he sounded that way because most of his time in school so far this year had been spent keeping his head down and seeking out a loudmouth calculus student to kill. He hadn’t even connected a phone in his apartment, for he hadn’t had anyone to call.

“Anyway,” she said, reaching out her hand to shake his. “I’m Bedelia. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Hannibal,” he said, taking her hand and shaking once. She had a firm, almost practiced handshake. He wondered if her father had ever sat down with her in his leather-and-wood study, taught her over an afternoon exactly how to shake a hand. He wondered if she also knew other skills such a father would deem valuable, such as writing a thank you note, making change, or crafting calligraphy.

Beside them, the buddy had finally wrestled his wineglass back from Dostoevsky, and to show the accomplishment, he downed the whole thing in one go, then looked up with pursed lips.

“It’s like grape juice,” he said. “Doesn’t even sting.”

“Obviously,” Bedelia said, then took another sip of her beer. “That’s what you get when you pay for cheap house red.”

“Is my tolerance really that high?” the buddy asked.

“Oh, absolutely not,” Dostoevsky said, then looped his arm around his buddy’s shoulders, flashed a kilowatt smile at Bedelia and Hannibal. “You’ve made a friend, Beddie.”

She gave an almost imperceptible grimace at the nickname, then said, “We’re in Latin together.”

“Oh!” Dostoevsky let go of his buddy’s shoulders, then stood with a wealthy lawyer’s confidence as he pointed at Hannibal and looked as if he were about to cross-examine a witness in a prominent court case. Either this man was studying something heartless, or he just had a strange and disconcerting kind of charisma. “We’re in Dostoevsky together. And the anatomy lab.”

Yes, Dostoevsky had given him notes after he missed a class, but Hannibal had forgotten about anatomy, his easiest course for the fall. What even was there to learn? All of the richer students in the class, they needed to know which muscles were where, what each organ looked like in a pieced-apart fetal pig, but any hunter, any farmer could’ve explained their laboratory assignments with ease. After being forced to work with an incompetent pre-medical lab partner for the semester, Hannibal had begun reconsidering whether or not he should continue seeing doctors. 

“Clark Shea,” Dostoevsky said, holding out a muscled, blazered arm, looking to shake Hannibal’s hand while they held intense eye contact. “Pleasure.”

 _Pleasure._ They shook hands, and before Hannibal could introduce himself, Clark looked over to his buddy and said, “And _this_ is the one and only Tony Welch.”

“It’s Andy,” the buddy said with resignation, another hated nickname. He held out a hand to shake Hannibal’s, the shake less intense than Clark’s and less interested than Bedelia’s. 

“ _Andy_ is not a nickname for _Anthony,_ ” Clark said, “unless that’s how you do things way up there in the great white north.”

They were only an hour south of the Canadian border; the look on Andy’s face showed Hannibal that he’d said such a thing enough times already to know not to bother repeating himself.

“Are you all in third year?” Hannibal asked, to which Bedelia and Andy nodded while Clark shook his head.

“Fourth,” Clark said, flaunting finger-guns. “Out of here in six months.”

“And then where will you go?” Hannibal asked.

Bedelia stifled a laugh as Andy looked down at his shoes.

“Home,” Bedelia said, Cheshire Cat grinning, “to his _daddy_.”

“Oh, piss off,” Clark said, hands down, Fosse fingers, “that’s one option, certainly.”

“His dad is a partner in New York,” Andy said softly, filling Hannibal in.

“But I have other options!” Clark exclaimed. “Such as, I could go to law school. Or graduate school. Or I could be hired on the spot in an archaeological dig up north in _his_ country.”

“All valid options,” Andy deadpanned, then returned his empty wine glass to the bar.

“But regardless of that,” Clark said, reaching out and gripping Andy’s nearby wrist, “I need the restroom. Care to join?”

Andy sighed as Clark started tugging him out of the reception area and toward the bathrooms, but he followed Clark anyway. Alongside Hannibal, Bedelia tipped back the remainder of her beer, then set the bottle down on the bar.

“Are they in your program?” Hannibal asked, nodding toward the passage Clark and Andy had gone down.

Shaking her head, Bedelia gave, “No, just friends.”

“How did you meet?”

“On campus.”

Usually, he could discern whether or not another person was lying, but she said those two words, _on campus_ , so effortlessly that he wondered if it could be the truth. But who simply meets their friends _on campus?_ What class had they been in, what club had they all joined?

“Clark’s mother has a lovely home in Salzburg,” Bedelia said, “and I stayed with them there through the spring. Though he can be jerk sometimes, he’s sweet.”

“And Andy?”

She huffed a laugh. “A kicked puppy.”

“Studying business?”

“American history. Wants to be a lawyer.”

“Might be a challenge,” Hannibal said. “He’s too kind.”

She laughed at that, shook her head. 

“He’s a good person, he really is,” she said, nodding, “but when it comes to academics, when it comes to his career, he’s relentless.”

“And what do you study?”

“I double-major in art history and chemistry.”

“Restorations, then?”

“Something like that.”

“Forgeries?”

She gave a tight-lipped smile.

“I’ve never been much of an artist,” she said; then, she turned the conversation away from herself, asked, “And what do you study?”

“At my previous college, I studied medical anthropology,” he said, “but since transferring, I’ve been put into the life sciences.”

“What made you transfer?”

“There were aspects of my previous college that heavily impeded my education.” Such as the faculty who started whispering about him behind his back, as well as the unsavory - though to a small degree true - rumors that were spread, but he didn’t think he needed to elaborate.

“So you’re in anatomy with Clark, then,” she said. “He was so nervous for the first dissection that he took my perfume to spray beneath his nose.”

Come to think of it, Hannibal could remember that day, how the scent of formaldehyde and rubber gloves was laced with something hinting at Chanel. He’d thought it bizarre at the time, had been wondering what tricks his brain wished to play on him. Even without the aromas of halted decay and sanitary protocols, her scent was unlike that perfume; maybe she’d changed bottles or run out of that one, for now she wore something oaky, a bit masculine but still undeniably floral. Jasmine oil, an undertone he couldn’t recognize. 

“Some have trouble with the scent of preservatives,” Hannibal said, “and we occasionally reuse the same specimens, storing them in plastic bins at the back of the classroom. The stench grows worse over time.”

She raised her brows but didn’t grimace, and then, the lights flashed twice, the signal for attendees to return to their seats.

“Listen,” she said, reaching out for his wrist the way Clark had toward Andy, “it’s a shitty play with bad local actors. And I don’t feel like listening to Clark anymore.”

When he met her gaze, he wondered for a moment if she knew his plans for her, if she could look into his eyes and see the images he had of running a blade across her neck, of spilling her blood, of filleting her and having her as his most decadent holiday dinner. Though he wasn’t one for mementos, he figured he would chop some of her hair, just a little bit, something gentle to remember her by. He wanted to run his fingers through her long blonde hair, wanted to feel how soft it was, wanted to press his palm against her neck and feel the throb of her heartbeat. 

But she didn’t know his plans, and her eyes were so big, so blue, breathtaking, freckles on her skin, she really was beautiful, a spellbinding kind of beautiful that made him feel as if he would do whatever she asked of him in that moment. He felt his heart pound and mentally begged her to ask him to join her somewhere.

“I'd like another drink,” she gave, fulfilling his wish. “Could I buy you one at the inn?”

* * *

Though the small town where Silverleaf College had been built was far enough outside of Boston and New York to be overlooked on maps, the local inn could rely on academic speakers, conferences, and prominent alumni and as a result stayed comfortably in business, the walls freshly painted and the fire in the main dining room always crackling on. The curtains were thick and heavy and clearly handmade; all of the dining tables were immaculate dark wood, no scuff marks or stains from glasses, and the leaded windows looked out at the forest beyond, the proper edge of town, beautiful. The fireplace’s hearthstones were made of carved slate, images of birds and deer emerging from the grey stone, and the wooded walls made the place feel like a leathery, clothbound book kind of study, a place where candlesticks and centerpieces on tables were simply assumed, a place that at Christmas would put up an eight-foot tree in the corner and cover the thing in white lights and gold ribbons. Hannibal sat across from Bedelia at one of the tables, the two of them sharing a bottle of wine while candles in between them flickered on, the dim light of the dining room casting her in a warm glow. 

“Angie went to Columbia, but she left when she became pregnant with her doctor-to-be boyfriend’s child,” Bedelia said after swallowing a sip. “She says she’ll go back eventually, but I don’t think she will.”

“And your younger sister?”

Angela was older than Bedelia by three years; Lydia was the youngest sister in her family. From what Hannibal could discern, Bedelia liked Angela more than she liked Lydia, but when she spoke about either sister, she held a look of contempt, as if the love she had for her sisters was merely an inconvenience or an instance of cognitive dissonance. He understood that, had Bedelia gone through Angie’s experience of college, Bedelia would have had an abortion instead.

“Lydia’s in Italy for a gap year,” Bedelia gave, “or at least that’s what I last heard.”

“When did you hear that?”

“April.”

It was now November.

“While I was in Austria, my parents asked me to contact her in Venice,” Bedelia said, aerating the wine in her glass, “and we spoke over the phone while she stayed at a hostel. I asked her to come to Salzburg, but she refused.”

“No taste for Austrian life?”

“I think she didn’t want to spend time with me,” Bedelia gave, “or with Clark, for that matter.”

“Were you together in the house for the whole semester?”

From January to May, Bedelia had studied at the University of Salzburg, working beneath a prominent professor in order to complete minor art restorations and study the compositions of renaissance paints. Clark’s mother’s house there looked out at the Hohensalzburg Fortress and the mountain behind it, the view beautiful as spring buds took to the trees. When she spoke about that time in her life, about stepping onto a sun-warmed porch to drink her tea in the morning, about gently pulling away years of decay from paintings, she was equally nostalgic and blue, seeming to wonder if life would ever be that beautiful again.

“No, just for certain weeks and weekends,” she said. “It was his mother’s house, but really, I was the only one living there.”

“A kind gesture from the family.”

“Yes, very.” 

He reached out to top off her glass. 

“And what drew you to restorations?” he asked, then set the bottle down.

She had a tab here already and insisted upon this Bordeaux, so he hadn’t seen the price, but based on the flavor profile, the age of the bottle, the label not being in English, he assumed the bottle had been expensive. Across from him at the table, she looked down at her glass and quirked a lip, a smile of soft love, the kind given when one’s baby laughed or when a lover gently kissed one’s neck. 

“There are the stories within the works themselves,” she said, “and those stories are the ones made famous, the ones we all wish to understand, but what we overlook is the story of how these works were created, then where they went after their creation. Which hands they passed through, how they traveled from one city to another. To most it may just be grime and decay, but there’s a story there, one hidden in history and in chemical composition and in hand-me-down tales. It’s harder to learn and therefore more rewarding.”

Then, she extended her arm on the table, unfurled her fingers, presented her wrist to him. 

“Bodies are similar,” she said, then pressed her fourth finger to her thumb and flexed her wrist, revealing a prominent muscle. “The palmaris longus. Once used to help humans jump quickly from tree to tree, the muscle is now absent in a significant portion of the population.”

He pressed his thumb to his fourth finger and looked down, watched the muscle spring into place. 

“Though I doubt I’ll ever meet a human being who frequently uses this muscle, it nonetheless tells me what my ancestors needed for survival,” she says. “Its irrelevance within my life reflects little on what it means to be human. Even such a small detail as a muscle in my wrist can show me a history so seemingly removed from myself. It may be merely a muscle, or it may be oxidation on a centuries-old painting, but it matters despite its minutiae.”

She relaxed her wrist and reached for her wine glass.

“And the restorations are a comfortable break from the constant phallic imagery,” she gave, then took a sip.

Though he now scolded himself for it, knew he’d been small and petty not to, he hadn’t expected to find her to be a vibrant conversational partner, the kind of person who could entertain guests for hours or hold someone in deep, comfortable conversation all night. For once, he didn’t want his encounter with a woman to end quickly; instead, he wished they could sit in this dining room until it closed for the evening, then wander their way up to one of the rooms, in which they would pour minibar whiskeys as they dove into conversation about the universe. She was the kind of woman who would make six hours in a museum of fine art feel like only a few minutes. She was undeniably interesting in ways he hadn't predicted.

“What do you plan to do once you graduate?” she asked, swirling her wine again. She had such gentle hands, shockingly gentle. He imagined them holding cotton balls, clean paintbrushes, and dabbing decay off of works of art.

“Medical school,” he said, concise and accurate. That way, he would be employed in a field in which his skills were valuable and commonplace rather than suspicious. 

“And what medicine do you wish to practice?”

“Orthopedic surgery.”

“Plenty of bone saws.” She sipped her wine daintily, meeting his gaze as she did so.

“I find the structure of joints fascinating.”

“You didn’t need me to tell you of that muscle, then.”

He quirked a smile, gave, “No, I think I needed you to tell me that.”

She raised a brow, then finished her glass, and his wishes started to come true again: a waiter approached their table, said that they were closing up in five minutes - though neither of them had realized it, the rest of the diners were gone now, the bar empty - and would they mind taking the wine up to Ms. du Maurier’s residence.

“Residence?” Hannibal asked Bedelia, wondering if she had meals here often.

“I live upstairs,” she told him, then turned to the waiter and said they would leave before closing.

And she held the neck of the wine bottle as if choking it while they stepped into the lobby, the wooden tiles on the floor shaped into ornate stars, the grand staircase leading up to the rooms lined with a bright red carpet over the dark steps; the lights on the walls were ancient and gold-toned, and the front desk had emptied for the evening, a sign with the proper number to dial for assistance left in place of a staff member. The inn artfully combined New England charm and rusticity with the grandeur and detail of a European palace, the downstairs reading room for guests providing an academic twist on the aesthetic. He figured this was a wonderful place to live.

“Thank you,” he said, standing before the staircase with her, in essence walking her home, “for the drink.”

“Thank you for giving me a reason to leave that play,” she said, huffing a laugh.

Before he could think through the question, before he could determine his intentions, he asked, “Would you like to have dinner with me tomorrow evening?”

She furrowed her brow as she looked up at him, the question coming out of nowhere even though, while he sat with the discomfort of having asked, the question made sense. A drink, call that a first date. Dinner, a second. But was it a date? Wouldn’t he kill her afterward? He knew where she lived, what her habits were, which friends she could be found alongside. What more did he need to know?

“I’m busy,” she said, and he figured this was a kind but firm _no_ until she reached into her handbag and pulled out her notebook and pen from class, then began writing down her phone number. She tore the page out, handed it to him, and said, “But some other time, yes.”

As he took the slip of paper, he smiled.


	3. The Societies

When he looked out his kitchen window on Tuesday, he saw three police cruisers parked on the road alongside the main gates to the college, one occupied and the other two parked. He tied on his shoes, took his coat from the closet by the door, and shrugged into the garment as he jaywalked the road and went beneath the gates, heading to nine o’clock multivariate calculus. With November in full swing, the breezes were fast and cold; he would need to purchase a scarf, his last one having been covered in blood from a sloppy kill that still made him wince to think about. When he took his unassigned and unspoken seat in the lecture, he took out his notebook and pen, then looked up to find the professor entering while trailed by a campus cop and two of the town’s police officers. Girls in the row in front of him turned toward each other and shared an uncomfortable but inconsequential glance: _can they smell that we’ve been smoking?_

“Good morning,” the professor gave, setting his satchel down by the podium at the front of the classroom, pulling out his notes for the lecture. He wore a navy blue blazer each day, the shoulders gapping inward because they’d been tailored too small. “It has been brought to my attention that a student in this lecture was reported missing one week ago. Due to the size of the class, I have been so far unaware of this; had I known, I would have brought up the topic earlier.”

The class was fifty students deep, one of the largest in the entire college, but Hannibal had been to universities where lectures contained upwards of three hundred people, the professors using microphones and speakers arranged at various places within the auditorium. Hadn’t he noticed that the most talkative member of his class had gone missing? Or did things like that happen here often enough? Maybe this had been the proper place to which to transfer.

“Anyway,” the professor continued, then looked down to a note he had on the podium, a reminder of exactly what the cops wanted him to bring up, “if anyone here has any knowledge of Ms. Tina Frey’s whereabouts, these three officers will be stationed outside of the classroom for the duration of this lecture, and you are all free to leave for a few moments to speak with them.”

Then, the cops walked out and went to stand in the hallway, and the professor picked up his chalk.

“Related rates in spherical proportions,” he began, then started writing in poor penmanship across the board.

A few girls toward the front of the class stood up together midway through the class, as if they all took the same amount of time to work up the courage to speak to the police; a few boys went out one by one, but all returned with neutral looks, offering what little information they had, doing their American duty and little else. He had killed the calculus girl - Tina, though he hadn’t known her name until today - a month ago, and only now did the police - or the college, for that matter - seem interested in finding her. The groundskeeper had been promptly replaced, his absence unquestioned, and this girl had been dead for three weeks before someone thought to look for her. Maybe she’d been a proper target, then. Despite the attention there would be now, maybe he had managed to find a girl who would stick out in her absence but not enough for people to wonder where she had gone.

When he left class that day, the cops were still stationed outside of the classroom, waiting to move on to Tina’s next class and seek out any witnesses there. Of course, they wouldn’t find any, but Hannibal wasn’t about to save them any time. He’d been thorough with the cleanup, had erased his evidence, and by now there wouldn’t be traces left, all of them having been taken out either in the garbage collection a month ago or in the washing-away from the most recent snowstorm. He didn’t have anything to worry about.

And he had two hours before his anatomy class, so he started walking toward Vinchy, then slowed on the path. He hadn’t called Bedelia yet, for he didn’t have a house phone, and he feared that using the payphone at the Quik Chek a block down from his apartment would be tacky, but he knew that she tended to go to Galway Commons after Latin, wondered if she might be there now. He went toward that building instead, sweeping past other students and huddling into his coat in order to stay warm.

“I swear, it was the creepiest thing,” one girl said as he passed, talking animatedly to her friend. “Bridgers just like, she pulled the thing out, and like, it’s _dead_. Like, _really_ dead. Not just a little.”

Really dead? Maybe this college had been the wrong place to go. Maybe the fact that they had accepted all of his credits was a testament to the college’s lowly status.

“Anyway,” the girl said, “apparently it’s kind of par for the course. Like, dead animals just pop up sometimes. There are secret societies or whatever, just like at Yale. Well, not really, they’re more lowkey, fewer congressmen or whatever, but they do weird shit from time to time. Or maybe it was just a dumb prank. Either way, Bridgers was horrified.”

Bridgers was a too-well-known French literature professor, her classes notoriously hard to follow whether or not a student spoke fluent English and French; she rambled about pointless things, chose little-known and hard-to-follow books for her courses and graded harshly both on grammar and on how much she liked each student individually. From what Hannibal had heard, she taught mostly first-year general education classes, and the first-years considered her both a laughingstock and a clear and present threat toward their graduate school applications. 

“I wish I could’ve seen the look on her face,” the friend said, and then they were out of earshot of Hannibal.

When he made his way into Galway, he found Bedelia in an overstuffed armchair by one of the radiators, a copy of _The Brothers Karamazov_ open in her hands. Her legs were crossed, her posture slouched, and she looked too warm and comfortable to be bothered, so he thought about ducking into the cafeteria for lunch first, but she glanced up at him before he could make that decision. And she smiled.

“Hey,” she said, and he wanted to hear that word again, maybe even three times more. _Hey. Hey. Hey._ “You never called.”

“I don’t have a house phone.”

Why did he say that? What an inelegant thing to say. The cops on campus were getting to him. Now, he would need to wait a few weeks before he killed Bedelia, maybe until after the Thanksgiving holiday. Maybe he should leave now, install a home phone, and call her after the break instead. Then, he could take her to dinner, invite her back to his apartment, and slit her throat there. No, too bloody, and his landlord would notice, so he could strangle her instead. But he didn’t like how tough strangling made meat, and the thought of her contorted visage as she struggled to breathe made him wince. No, he would have to be quick about it. It almost physically hurt him to imagine her in pain.

She marked her page with a piece of gold ribbon, then closed the book on her lap, sat up straight. Today, she wore black tights with a plaid mini skirt, her slouchy white sweater halfway tucked in, her hair pulled back into a long braid. Despite the weather, she wore heels that he doubted were warm, grey suede, pointed toes. 

“That’s no excuse,” she said, then pulled up her handbag from beside the chair she sat in, put the book away. She stood, hooked a finger onto her coat hanging off of the side of the armchair, and asked, “Have you had lunch yet?”

And though he could begrudge Silverleaf for many reasons, the food on campus could never be criticized, for everything was sourced locally, some even cultivated by students studying agriculture at a nearby campus. There were no greasy, lifeless hamburgers in sight; instead, there were rich paninis, warm fresh-baked breads, slow-roasted meats and handmade cappuccinos. The cafeteria itself reminded Hannibal of an old-fashioned diner, the black-and-white checkered ceramic tile almost painfully American and the vast array of table sizes catering to any kind of group, be it the bunch of English literature students who had pushed together a few four-seaters in order to all study together for an upcoming examination, the professors at a round table in the corner of the room, or the two of them, finding a two-seat table by one of the long windows and sitting down together. The windows, he believed, were the best part of the cafeteria, for they were long and wide and looked ancient, some of them even featuring panels of stained glass. In front of him, he had a portobello and mozzarella panini with heirloom tomato slices; Bedelia had a goat cheese, pear, and walnut salad for lunch, the bowl large and deep, and an artful little latte to drink. 

“So,” she gave, taking a sip of the latte, her two hands wrapped around the ceramic mug, “did you hear about the missing girl?”

“Tina,” he said in confirmation as he picked up one half of his sandwich. “The police came to my multivariate calculus class.”

“My father wanted me to study mathematics,” Bedelia said, setting the mug down and picking up her fork. 

“Why exactly?”

“Because he thought it would be reliable,” Bedelia gave, “but I find it dull as can be.”

“Doesn’t chemistry require plenty of math?”

She gave a tight-lipped smile, then looked up at him.

“At least chemistry has consequences,” she said, then speared her salad with enough force to shake their table. “Anyway, people go missing every year. It’s too rural here, too few gas stations, too few phones. She’ll turn up in a month, claiming that she got lost on the Mass Pike when in reality she met a drummer from a failing Boston band and decided to be his groupie.”

“Well, then.”

“Her parents must be prominent,” Bedelia said, “if they brought the cops to your class.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

When the light from the windows hit her at certain angles, he began to see that she had freckles on her nose, some even on her cheeks. Though he knew she wore some, he figured she didn’t wear much makeup, that she was beautiful in a way that cosmetics sometimes dampened; he wished he could see all of her freckles.

“On my way here,” he said, “I heard some girls talking about entrails in Bridgers’ lecture.”

Bedelia closed her eyes in annoyance, looked down at her salad. Thankfully, neither of them had ordered a dish with meat.

“Standard prank,” Bedelia gave. “Happens every year. I wish students wouldn’t pick on her.”

“I’ve heard that her classes are challenging.”

“I’ve heard that freshmen rarely rise to a challenge.”

“Were you ever one of her freshmen,” he asked, “rising to the challenge?”

“It isn’t hard to get an A if you’re willing to work.”

“A life lesson.”

“A fairly obvious one.”

“They mentioned the secret societies.”

“Have you learned about those yet?”

“No, not at all.”

She set her fork down, tapped her pale pink nails against the table.

“There are four I know of,” she said, her voice sounding tired; though she had no interest in such things, she would explain them to him so that, if he ever were to find entrails left in the room where he held his office hours, he would understand who had sent them. “There’s the Order of Foxglove, the one that left the entrails. Some just call them the Foxes, a name that helps confuse events. Tradition says that initiates are to leave the entrails of a dead fox on a faculty member’s desk; if they aren’t caught in the process, they advance to the next stage of membership. They’re recent, from what I can gather, maybe less than forty years old. Other than the entrails, they rarely act in public. I don't know much else about them.

“Then, there’s Lost Scripture, with Christian leanings and deeply racist bylaws, though they’ll never admit to only accepting Aryan men. Their initiations are kept in the deepest secrecy, with fallen initiates sometimes reporting kidnappings of other initiates to the police. The most that students will learn about them comes from speaking to the police when a roommate hasn’t come home for a week, wondering where this person could possibly have gone. The clues are strange, the initiate’s bedroom having been destroyed as if there’d been a robbery but only inconsequential items - toothbrushes, empty notebooks, shoelaces - having been taken; while the person seems to have disappeared altogether, their roommates will hear them come and go from the apartment nonetheless, and they’ll leave dirty dishes in the sink as well, and only ones covered in the initiate’s typical meals. Sometimes, the society will even wash the roommates’ linens. Though I’ve never met any members, or at least no members I’ve known of, they strike me as violent.

“The Lovers League was formed in response to Scripture, or so the local legends claim. Lovers wanted to accept those that Scripture pushed out and harmed; that is, anyone who wasn’t a white American man would be considered on the same basis as any other initiate. At the time this was supposedly revolutionary; they accepted women long before the Foxes did, and they keep mostly to themselves instead of lashing out at others. However, they’re not entirely secretive. Last fall, one of my roommates was an initiate, and she told me plenty about the Lovers, how they shared test answers and helped each other find internship placements. They seem more like an academic fraternity than a secret society to me, but though I heard plenty about them, what I heard was only their public information. There’s plenty left unknown, no matter what she said.

“The oldest society, the one that Henry Silverleaf formed when he founded the college, is the Society of the Meadowlark. Though they’ve modernized over time, they’ve stuck to their roots: no women, no classless men, no academic failures. There are rumors that they have no more than twelve members enrolled in the college at once, and that the network of alumni funds their housing, their meals, even their graduate school educations. Some say that they can be found in the underground tunnels on the first Saturday evening of the month wearing dark robes that cover their faces, but when a roommate and I went to see if such a thing were true, we found it not to be.”

“Tunnels?”

She nodded. “The tunnels under the buildings.”

He shook his head, not understanding, so she clarified, “The original buildings of the college - Dietz, the main building, the library - were connected by underground tunnels when the university was built so that students wouldn’t have to walk outdoors in freezing temperatures. Because of the asbestos, students aren’t permitted in the tunnels anymore, but they can be broken into so long as one has the proper knowledge and skills.”

“So you broke in.”

She shrugged, went back to her salad.

“Someone else had left the door unlocked,” she gave, “ but there weren’t any hooded figures. No Meadowlarks.”

She took a bite, continued, “Anyway, if something odd happens near you, don’t worry about it. The dean knows about all of the societies, and if they overstep, there’s bound to be expulsions. Entrails on a professor’s desk are to be expected, but they aren’t going to harm anyone, at least not publicly or in a way that the dean can witness. It’s all just school lore at this point, nothing interesting.”

Though he begged to differ, he nodded and let the topic drop, certain she had no more desire to discuss the societies.

“You said you had a roommate,” he offered, a new topic. “Why did you move to the inn, then?”

She furrowed her brow; this was the wrong question to ask, an uncomfortable one.

“I wanted to stay in Salzburg through the summer,” Bedelia said, gaze down, “but I couldn’t manage an assignment at the university. I lied to my parents, told them I’d taken an internship in Vienna, and stayed in Europe through the summer, mostly in Slovenia but occasionally in Hungary. I had to renew my visa; I thought I might stay until winter came, come home for the holidays, but there were complications back home, so I flew to London, then to New York, in time for the start of the semester. My parents rented me a room in the inn until the middle of December to chain me to this place. I couldn’t have managed an apartment by then anyway, but I’d much prefer the freedom of even freshmen residence to this.”

“What happened back home?”

She closed her eyes in annoyance, another wrong question.

“Family affairs,” she gave, ending the conversation there.

Her salad bowl was empty; his sandwich was long gone; she took the last few sips of her latte, and when he looked at his watch, he found that his office hours were about to start, so he needed to head to the library.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I’ve lost track of time. I have to go.”

“Yes,” she gave, then looked down at her own thin-banded watch, buttery leather. Her wrists were so narrow, the bones almost too close together. She had three freckles on top of her pisiform bone.

“I’ll think about installing a house phone,” he said, trying to lighten the mood. He took her dishes, a decent courtesy; she didn’t thank him as she pulled her coat back on, as she slipped back into her leather gloves.

“It’s snowing.”

Looking toward the windows, he saw fat flakes falling, a November scene, grass still visible but the trees bare of leaves; students were flitting to the windows, pointing out the snow, talking excitedly among themselves. Outside, some were even spinning around on the grass, tongues out, catching flakes. He looked to Bedelia; to his surprise, he found her smiling. 

“A fresh storm,” she gave, then shouldered her handbag, made her way out of the cafeteria and toward the Dietz’s entrance.

And he’d promised himself that he wouldn’t follow her, but once he’d brought back their dishes, once he’d put back on his coat and left the building, he found that they were walking in the same direction, both heading for the library; she was a far enough away from him that he didn’t appear to be following her, but he was close enough to watch as she removed the elastic from her hair, as she shook out her braid. Though her hair was light blonde, he could still see the little snowflakes landing on the pleats left behind from the braid, watched as they made her glow in the half-hooded light of the November sun. When she walked up the steps to the library, when she opened one of the many front doors, she almost caught a glimpse of him, and he blushed, uncomfortable with himself, uncomfortable with knowing her. He wished he could invite her to his apartment for a drink, as if his new apartment were furnished like his old one, as if he still had roommates who were wealthy enough to buy expensive whiskey and destroy beautiful things for fun. He wished he could take her to dinner somewhere other than the inn, but he’d sold his car, and this place was too rural to have upscale restaurants. _Maybe I could cook for her,_ he thought, but why cook for her if he would ultimately kill her? Why bring that mess first to his home?

He could find someone else to kill, but then how would he see her again? Why would he ask to take her to dinner at all if he didn’t plan to kill her?

As he walked up the stairs in the library, he looked down at the many shelves of books on the first floor, a sea of literature over a plush red carpet, long tables in between the shelves left as spaces to study, and he found her by her hair alone, the snowflakes starting to melt. She was sitting at one of the long tables and had a chemistry textbook set out in front of her, her notebook left alongside; she was working through equations with the smallest hint of a smile on her lips, an involuntary look, a look of love. 

By the end of November, he would kill her, and as he ate her, he would, for once, feel remorse.


	4. The Lark Party

As he went about his week, he seemed to find police officers everywhere: in Galway between classes, in the cafeteria for lunch, in the library offices conducting interviews about Tina Frey’s supposed whereabouts. Rumors traveled quickly in the small town, but as Bedelia had predicted, many stemmed from Tina being a rebellious runaway, a girl now living in a shitty flat in Boston, someone who found college either too daunting or too dull and thus sought excitement elsewhere. While Hannibal walked to his anatomy laboratory class, he overhead two girls gossiping that Tina had decided to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail, starting off at the nearest mountain to campus, but certainly more bizarre ideas were being spread. Of course people here went missing, all of them way out in this rural area, but the prevalence of cops of campus told him that on this case they were particularly stumped. They wouldn’t find any evidence, he'd made sure of that, and he wouldn’t be connected to her unless they searched his apartment. So long as he kept his head down, so long as he blended in, Tina Frey would never be found.

He was angling his scalpel above a bovine eyeball when he felt a tap on the back of his labcoat-clad shoulder, so he turned around, saw Clark Shea standing behind him. Why would he bother taking anatomy if he intended to be a lawyer, or at least to work for his father? Unsurprisingly, Clark wasn’t wearing protective eyewear or the proper issued labcoat and instead wore a v-neck sweater in blood red, expensively tailored grey pants, leather shoes that stuck out as if he typically wore sandals instead. Though he was a handsome man, there were too many offputting qualities to him in this classroom for Hannibal to warm to him the way other near-strangers would.

“You,” Clark said directly to Hannibal while Hannibal’s lab partner, a stocky but squeamish boy named Chris, looked away from the uncut eyeball and tried not to wretch, “I’m inviting you to a party this weekend.”

Not being one for parties - too much exposure, too much noise, too many people, and, in the case of this rural college, likely too many drugs - Hannibal started thinking of a polite way to decline, but Clark kept talking, adding, “It’s a costume party, but it’s an avant-garde costume party. Not that the costumes are avant-garde; we’re just toning down the concept of a costume party.”

 _That doesn’t make any sense,_ Hannibal thought but asked instead, “What attire, then?”

“Masks will be handed out at the door,” Clark said, then pulled the latex glove off of Hannibal’s hand and took a pen from his own pocket, writing down an address and time on Hannibal’s skin. “Drinks will be served. Wear your Sunday best.”

Then, Clark patted Hannibal’s shoulder twice and headed back toward his own pissed lab partner, not a pushover like Andy, someone willing to put up his hands and ask _why?_ His own lab partner excused himself to the bathroom, so Hannibal retrieved new gloves on his own, made his first cut without worrying that his partner would vomit all over their lab surface again. In comparison, a human eyeball was far different; the inner part of the bovine eye, the shimmery tapetum lucidum that resembled the inside of a mussel shell, reflected light and helped the cow to see, but humans lacked this anatomical feature, instead using the retina primarily for lighting control in vision. As a result, humans photographed with flash would have red eyes, the reflection off of blood vessels, while animals had white eyes, the reflection off of the tapetum lucidum. Though bovine eyes were more beautiful internally than human eyes were, there was something so special about plucking out eyeballs before the corneas began to cloud, such a small window of time, such beautiful hues of the iris, such differing colors. Tina had had brown eyes, gold-flecked, while the groundskeeper’s had been a boring, blank blue. Inside, their eyes had been thick and black with choroid plexus, but the irises had been special. No shell-colored membrane could ever replace the quickly perishing beauty of a human iris.

The lens felt like a mancala piece between his fingers. The vitreous humor was firmer than gelatin but still similar in texture. To him, dissections weren’t a class so much as an enticement, an exciting opportunity once a week, a chance to label blood vessels he’d already seen in plenty of other specimens and a weekly fix for his academic tastes. Someday soon, he hoped that the teaching assistant would offer dates at which students could travel to the state university and see the cadavers in the laboratory there; then, he would rent a car and go alone, observing as long as he could, taking notes of which blood vessels were where, which organs atrophied when one steadily died of a certain disease. His gloves removed, his biological waste left in the proper bins, he washed his hands of the assignment, then pinched his fourth finger and thumb together, flexed his wrist; he imagined himself finding this little muscle on a cadaver’s wrist, then imagined Bedelia in some far-off place, her paintbrush gently running down a renaissance painting’s canvas, hundreds of years of tarnish gone with a single brushing of the perfect chemical composition. 

He should’ve asked if she would be at the party, but given that Clark had invited him, he figured she would be there, wearing a dress and a mask, drinking expensive wine because, if Clark was hosting, the alcohol was bound to be high-end. Though he didn’t like parties, he liked her, and he hadn’t had a chance to call her yet, hadn’t installed a house phone, kept her phone number on top of his writing desk but never picked up the slip of paper and called her. He told himself that he needed time to plan killing her, but part of him wanting to take her to dinner anyway, to put off on planning, to learn more about her before he found a way to kill her. Maybe he could learn more at the party. Maybe he could take her home afterward, kill her there, the case of her disappearance one spoken about at length throughout the town.

No, too sensational, he would surely be caught, but maybe she would take him up to her room at the inn, have one last drink together before the night ended. Maybe they would have a chance to talk first. Maybe she would learn to trust him.

By the time the laboratory class came to an end, he was offering his partner copies of his notes on the experiment, he knew these things by heart already and could spare the details, and his partner looked on with such deep relief that Hannibal knew he’d done the right thing. Leaving class, he watched as Clark tapped his own lab partner on the back, maybe inviting him to the party this weekend too. Hannibal read off of his hand, _500 Sterling Place, Saturday, 9pm,_ and wondered if that was where Clark lived, maybe with Andy, maybe with people he barely knew. Would the roommates mind the noise? Given that this was Clark’s party, Hannibal figured there would be noise.

Because there were police officers standing at the campus entrance closest to Hannibal’s apartment, he headed in the direction of the library, taking the big entrance across from the Quik Chek instead. Though he had nothing to worry about, he was unwilling to tempt fate, even less willing for the cops to put a name to his face, so he crossed the street away from them, tugged up his scarf as he walked on the sidewalk adjacent to his building. Then, he heard something that made him stop short, looked to the payphone at the gas station and found Bedelia there in her signature camel-colored coat, her hair tied back in a high and unflattering ponytail, a scowl etched onto her face. 

“You’re not listening,” she insisted as she spoke, and he thought of the slip of paper on his writing desk, the number she gave him for her room at the inn; if she went home, she could make a much less expensive phone call, but instead, she was making that call here. Why would she do such a thing? “Either you believe me or you don’t.”

Hannibal pressed onward, walking so as not to look conspicuous, but he kept his pace slow in hope that he could hear more of her conversation. A car pulled into the gas station, turned off its engine; he hunched his shoulders, tried not to show his face.

“You weren’t there,” she pressed on. “You have no idea what you’d have done. Get off the fucking high horse.”

The other person on the line must’ve said something agitating, so she rolled her eyes, mumbled _fuck’s sake,_ and hung up the phone, walking quickly away from the gas station, heading toward the sidewalk. Forcing himself onward, Hannibal quickened his pace, managed thankfully to duck into his building before Bedelia could see him on the sidewalk. Once he’d managed to unlock his apartment, he looked out the kitchen window to see her entering the campus gates, anger clear in her gait; she was heading toward the library, but he knew from her demeanor and her clear intentions during that call that she wasn’t heading to class or looking to study.

Should he follow her? No, of course he shouldn’t, but he wanted to know where she was going so desperately that, as he tried to study for the rest of the night, he found himself distracted as he thought of her words. _You’re not listening. You weren’t there. You have no idea what you’d have done._ He tried not to let his imagination haunt him on her behalf.

* * *

For a Saturday night party in avant-garde Sunday best, he hadn’t a clue what to wear, but he thought that a pair of decent pants - not good enough for a grant interview but good enough for a nice dinner - and a pressed blue button-down - not white, for white would be too formal - would suffice. No tie, no jacket, he would dress for a college party with higher standards but minimal standards nonetheless. Just in case, he decided to bring the one bottle of wine he had in his kitchen, something he only kept because he never wished to be so desperate that he drank the cooking wine instead. Though such a bottle was a mediocre host gift, it was alcohol, so he doubted Clark would mind.

Sterling Place was out beyond the main thickets of houses, toward a richer part of town that had long, tree-lined driveways; the numbers of the houses weren’t sequential, with 450 coming after 475 but before 480 and with both odds and evens on the same side of the street, but eventually he found 500, the mailbox brass and marked with an ornately carved bird, the place gated though the gate had been left open for now. Figuring this was an invitation inside, he started off on the long driveway, the dense forest surrounding it making him wonder if he could, in theory, be entering somewhere dangerous. 

After the long, dark walk down the driveway, occasionally illuminated by flickering lanterns hung from trees, he started to hear music coming from the distant brick mansion, its three floors featuring candled windows, the strange color of the mansion in lamplight making Hannibal feel as if this were a film set, a false and aesthetical representation of what could be. The Georgian architecture was out-of-place this close to Silverleaf, but given how far this mansion was from campus, how long and secluded the driveway was, Hannibal doubted this house was from the same era as any of Silverleaf’s buildings were. In front of the columned entrance, a man dressed in a suit and holding a piece of thick paper kept watch, sized Hannibal up as he walked past the group of parked cars.

“Your name,” the man - though man was a generous term, for this man was likely Hannibal’s age or younger and still had acne on his chin - prompted, so Hannibal gave his name and watched as the man scanned down the slip of paper, crossed off the given name, then handed Hannibal a gold-toned mask, one painted in Renaissance style and covering his entire face, and prompted him to put it on.

“A mask?” Hannibal asked, but the man simply shrugged.

“It’s a masquerade,” the man gave. “Comes with the territory.”

After Hannibal put on the mask, the man clicked through the keypad that kept the front door locked. A keypad? Whoever owned this place may have valued aesthetics and architecture, but Hannibal felt that they likely valued their privacy far more.

Was this Clark’s home? As Hannibal walked into the main room, the music grew louder, the half-light throughout the house making him squint, he doubted that any student, even one as rich as Clark, could afford such a place or would even want to live somewhere like this. On the walls, delicate oil paintings were hung, portraits of men throughout the ages, and the furniture was gilded and clearly hand-embroidered, everything within the house as well as the house itself a valuable antique. How many bedrooms were here, maybe ten? Twelve? Out of the entryway, Hannibal entered the main room, a wide place with dark hardwood floors and a crackling fireplace against a wall of painted tiles, all covered in blue illustrations of birds. Above the fireplace was a reproduced sepia photograph, the image flaunting a group of men dressed well in maybe the 1920s, men who would never have been affected by the Depression. Across the room, a grand piano was being repurposed as a chair for a beer-drunk girl in a tight, short dress, her mask askew. Though everyone wore a mask, the masks differed in color and shape, some more heart-shaped and others more square; the men who wore suit-jackets and ties looked overdressed, but all of the women, most of whom danced in the middle of the room while the electronic music grew louder and louder, looked perfect in short dresses, some shimmery and some solid, draping fabrics, long legs, heeled shoes. He wished there were such a thing for men as a dress, not in the literal sense but in the figurative one; he wished that there was a way for a man to be the perfect combination of presentable and simple, a single article of clothing conveying exactly what he wished it to convey. Across the room, one woman jumped through the song while wearing a drapey white dress, her little silver shoes sparkling in the dim light, her hair bouncing against her back, the image captivating; another woman talked to a man while she held a clear glass filled to the brim and spoke about economics, the slit of her short red dress making one of her garters show. And then, he saw one woman in a gold dress, the skirt shimmering against the light of the fire, the puffed long sleeves and wrap top hugging her taut body, grace and athleticism together, and she danced with the other girls, her blonde curls following her motions, her gold mask covering her face but her identity unmistakable.

_Bedelia._

But it would be wrong to interrupt her. Without a drink in her hand, without any men talking to her, she was having fun, and he didn’t want to take that away from her. Thankfully, a familiar clap came to his shoulder, and when he turned around, he found Clark standing before him, his energy and haircut recognizable despite the mask.

“You showed up!” Clark rejoiced, then reached out for the wine bottle Hannibal still held. “Thank you for your contribution, kind sir.”

Of course, Andy was right behind Clark, his mask looking out-of-place on such a serious person. Though Andy wore a tie, it had been loosened - likely by Clark rather than by Andy himself - and he nursed two fingers of scotch as if the glass were his lifeline for tonight.

“Whose house is this?” Hannibal asked, trying to talk over the loud electronica. Though he wasn’t one for this kind of music, he found himself warming to it with how the women danced, how they smiled, how they laughed as the songs changed. It may not have been pleasant music for listening, but for this purpose, it was perfect. 

“Ours,” Clark gave without elaboration, as if Hannibal should know exactly who _us_ was. “Here, let me introduce you to some people.”

And Clark took Hannibal’s wrist the way he’d taken Andy’s plenty of times before and dragged Hannibal into another room, this one quieter despite its proximity to the main room and carpeted in white, the upholstered couch a contrast of white cloth and mahogany wood, candelabras lighting the room. A group of men sat on the couch and in nearby armchairs, a kind of sitting room with old paintings on the walls and wide windows looking out toward the woods. 

“Men,” Clark gave, “meet…”

He turned to Hannibal, then gave, “Seems I’ve forgot your name.”

“Hannibal Lecter,” Hannibal said, then approached the first of the men, started shaking hands. 

There were three men on the couch, two in navy suit-jackets and one in burgundy and all wearing the necessary masks: Ed, Markus, Stephen, they blended together in his mind as a corner of the American flag personified and holding glasses of scotch. Despite the high-end clothes, the ornate and gilded room, the mahogany accents and the expensive drinks, there will still men here who were out of place, a Maverick who skipped a year of high school in order to competitively downhill ski and a Franco who, despite his affluent Florentine parents and his gold cufflinks, was careless enough to put his feet up on a chair and later to walk to the nearest window, prop the thing open, and start blowing cigarette smoke out of the little crack in his mask and through the open window. Though each man had at least an iota of personality, they blended in certain ways: political science majors, history majors, pre-law, pre-medical, vacation homes, Connecticut resident, dual citizenship, dean’s list. Were these really Bedelia’s and Clark’s friends? They seemed so bland in comparison.

“Why not the join the party?” Hannibal asked, looking back toward the dancing women, momentarily trying and failing to find Bedelia in the crowd. He wished he could feel the silky material of her dress between his fingers, then bring his palm to her side, warm, taut skin beneath buttery fabric. 

“You mean the women,” John - Connecticut resident, hair gel, black suit jacket and skinny tie - gave smugly, then sipped at his dwindling glass of gin.

In response, Luca - a political science major on a pre-law track whose parents summered in Geneva - slapped John’s side in disgust, shaking his head afterward, _not cool._

“We _could,_ ” Maverick said from his perch on one of the armchairs. He had restless legs that seemed to crave the snow outside, a mountaintop instead maybe, gates all the way down the slope. He had no use for parties, but at least dancing would be better than sitting in a room and drinking slowly.

And eventually certain men left to refill drinks, to find their way elsewhere, to speak to certain ones of the women they’d been eyeing, and on occasion, Hannibal looked out of the room and toward the main room in order to find Bedelia dancing there, her smile visible despite the mask. Maybe it was small of him, but he liked that she could have fun in such basic ways. Though she was adept at deep, meandering conversation, she could dance to bland electronic music too, and the women around her seemed to gravitate toward her, as if her enjoyment could find its way into their own bodies through osmosis. The world had liked women to be just one kind of person, but over time, there had been more forms of women emerging; the mother and the housewife were no longer the exclusive descriptors of women, so _the secretary_ or _the doctor_ could eventually trickle in, but as he could discern from the men he sat near, he knew that _the doctor and mother_ was far from being a typical and celebrated title, was a title that weak men - and there were many weak men in the world - feared. But Bedelia was a scientist and an artist, an intelligent scholar and a party girl, a fashionable woman and a student who could correct her professors with ease. Simultaneously, she was everything a woman could be, and she combined those aspects of identity with such ease that he felt breathless as he watched her, the smile on her face as she read a chemistry book gone now in favor of a toothier grin, wider-mouthed happiness, happiness shared with others. She wasn’t just one kind of person. He doubted she ever could be just one kind of person.

And across the main room and through the wide doorway into his room, she spotted him, her body momentarily stilling, slowing down while all the women around her kept dancing, and despite the mask, he could see the change in her eyes, the recognition, brightness and gold and shimmering dresses and sounds that sent heartbeat reverberations throughout the old house. And she nodded to him, halfway-beckoning, but he didn’t want to disrupt her, wanted to let her have her fun. Beside him, the men talked about things that were objectively interesting but subjectively drab - politics, academics, graduate schools, money - and he longed for the inn’s dining room at night, snow on the ground outside, a candlelit dinner between them, the other diners a cacophony of menial conversation and silverware against ceramic; he wished she could show him the muscles in her wrist again, could teach him the practical function of one he’d only had to memorize the placement of for his examinations. He wished he could watch as she brought a soaked cotton pad to a painting that had been kept over a fireplace for fifty years, then gently scrubbed away the soot and revealed the beautiful marvel underneath. He wished she would tell him the chemical composition of the soaking mixture, then press the saturated cotton to the back of his hand an ask him if the solution burned his skin.

And he was tired of listening to men talk, so as the woman danced in the main room, he stood up from his place on the couch, left the room and walked toward where Bedelia danced, the song winding down, her eye catching him every few beats. When the song ended, he felt comfortable reaching out toward her, gently touching her wrist in order to pique her attention. When she turned around, her smile audible in the word, she gave, “Hey.”

“Hey,” he said, matching the word. _Hey. Hey. Hey._

“I was wondering if you would come,” she said. 

“What is this place?” Hannibal asked yet again, trying to speak over the music. “Whose house is it?”

Not hearing the question, she shook her head, asked, “Can we go somewhere quieter? To talk?”

“Okay,” he said, so he let her take his hand and guide him out of the main room and through two others, one done up in deep blue velvet, the other featuring a long mahogany dining table that could easily seat twenty. 

And following her was uncomfortably serene. Of course, the house was beautiful, but he watched the way her hair touched the silk of her dress, how the varying light throughout the house made her shimmer. She must’ve curled her hair for tonight, gone through her closet and found the perfect dress, dabbed perfume on her wrists and adorned her eyes with gold makeup, brought mascara to her lashes, chosen a mask that matched perfectly. He wanted to sit down in one of these quieter rooms with her and watch as she took off her mask. He wanted a reminder of just how shockingly blue her eyes were.

“Up here,” she gave, then pulled him toward a grand hardwood staircase, the carpet runners gold and bright, the second and third floors waiting above them, the bedrooms.

Softly, he smiled. He would finally have her alone.


	5. The Anonymous Bedroom

Behind them, she shut the bedroom door, and then, the house fell near-silent, the only reminder that a party raged on downstairs being the gentle and distant vibrations of the electronic music. 

“Sit down,” she said, taking him to the bed, sitting at the edge toward the head while he sat toward the footboard. 

“I was wondering whose home this was,” he gave, then let go of her hand and looked around at the bedroom, tried not to look at her.

The wallpaper was white and columned, straight lines framing the big room. Above the headboard, a long window stretched across the wall, the curtains parted and the view of the dark woods beyond enchanting. Adjacent to the bed was a big closet, and on the opposite wall was a white vanity with three mirrors, three makeup palettes stacked atop, a display of soft brushes kept organized for whoever used them each day. The bathroom door had a single scratch near its handle as if someone had desperately locked someone or something inside and leaned their weight against the door in hope that it would stay shut. The floors were hardwood, and the cream-colored curtains matched the white bedspread, the room almost too modern for a mansion like this one, every linen and piece of furniture arranged artfully and properly. Whoever lived here was a woman of taste but also a woman who hardly defined herself by the way her bedroom looked.

Leaning back onto one palm, Bedelia reached up with her open hand and took off her mask, set the thing behind her on the bed; he did the same, then met her gaze and felt his heart pound. Without the mask, without the noise, with such little distance between them, he could feel the warmth of her body, smell the masculine undertones and feminine overtones of her perfume, see the gold glitter she’d put on her eyelids to match her dress. She’d curled her long hair; she pushed the curls behind her shoulders, rolled her neck in order to stretch tired muscles, blonde tendrils daintily touching the silk of her dress. He wanted to take her hair in his hands, tie it back with a ribbon.

“We all call it the Alibi,” she gave, looking up at the ceiling.

“But whose home is it?”

Closing her eyes, she smirked, kept that secret to herself.

“I wasn’t sure you would come,” she said, turning to look at him. 

“Did you ask Clark to invite me?”

“Yes,” she said, but she averted her gaze from him, stared at the lamp on the bedside table. No eye contact. He realized that that was her tell for lying.

“And the other men,” he asked, “are all your friends as well?”

“More or less.”

Uncomfortably, they sat in half-silence together, vibrations from the music downstairs interrupting the rural quiet, the trees outside lit softly by moonlight. She had the tops of her cheekbones dusted with a gold highlight, the lamps in the bedroom making her makeup shimmer, and he wondered, could he go downstairs and find someone else? Right now, he could only smother her, and he didn’t want to choke her, didn’t want to put the bed’s pillow over her mouth and hold it there until she stopped struggling, no, she deserved a more dignified death, and she wanted to speak to him, after all. Bringing him up here, she’d told him that she wanted to be somewhere quieter, somewhere fit for talking. She wanted to tell him something.

“What did you want to talk about?” he asked.

Turning to face him, she leaned back on her palms, met his gaze, said, “I was wondering what your plans for next week were.”

“Next week?”

“The holiday.”

 _Right._ “Thanksgiving.”

“Yes, of course,” she said, laughing lightly at how absurd it was for him to forget. 

As always, the holiday was on Thursday, and Silverleaf students had classes on the Monday and Tuesday beforehand, chaining them to campus. Though plenty of professors canceled classes in order to travel home, plenty didn’t, and he had his anatomy lab next week nonetheless, all of his same assignments due throughout the week. What was the point of having the holiday at all if there was no rest involved?

“Are you going home?” she prompted, figuring he would never answer if she didn’t specifically ask.

“No,” he gave and left it at that. “Are you?”

“Unfortunately,” she said, sighing. “My sister’s just had a baby.”

“That’s wonderful news.”

“It’s stupid,” Bedelia said. “She never told me. I had to hear secondhand from my mother.”

“And your other sister?”

“Lydia?” She huffed, shook her head. “She’s still in Europe, for all I know. I wish she would come home for the holiday.”

“Is she more palatable than your other sister?”

She laughed at the word _palatable,_ then said, “She makes me feel as if I’m not crazy for questioning the social order. And she hates my older sister’s husband more than I do even though the rest of the family thinks he can do no wrong. I’m glad I’m not the only one who dislikes him.”

“Does he treat your older sister poorly?”

“Goodness, no,” she said, “but he’s from a prominent family, and he’s the reason she quit school prematurely. I could be wrong, but that feels villainous to me. As if he wants her to be held back.”

“It’s certainly not progressive.”

“ _Regressive_ is the world you’re seeking.”

He laughed awkwardly, gave, “I guess so.”

And in the quiet between them, she looked down toward her shoes, long neck exposed, and he thought of how knives cut through the muscles and tendons there, how they snapped back, elastic and bloody, spurting, ugly, messy. If he chose to choke her, then there would be a necklace of bruises above of her collarbone, and he imagined her corpse like that and winced. Clouded eyes, handprints on her neck, unbreathing, skin so pale, arms splayed alongside her body, the gold dress turning from goddesslike to cursed. And how would he take the body from this party? If he wanted to kill her, then he would need to do so in his own apartment, and maybe he could invite her over, offer to make her dinner, he was a good cook after all, and then, he would strangle her. No, he didn’t want to strangle her. Could he poison her? If the poison acted fast enough, if it caused organ malfunction rather than blood toxicity, maybe he could feed her something tainted and still be able to consume her. But he didn’t know anything about poisons, and though he realized that she likely knew plenty about them, given her studies into the medieval and chemical, he knew it would be morally repulsive to ask her. Still, he wished he could ask her about poisons anyway, not because he wanted to learn about them but because he wished to hear her talk, wanted her to tug him out into the garden of this Alibi and teach him about castor, how the seed is poison but the oil is a household staple used to relieve constipation and start childlabor. He wanted her to reach down into the soil, find seeds, and tear them from their stalks, then put a seed between his lips and ask him whether or not he dared swallow.

“I hate this time of year.”

She was still looking down at her shoes, and he looked down there too. She had muscular ankles, like a ballerina’s. He watched as the muscles flexed and relaxed, small movements, involuntary.

“Why?” he asked.

Sighing, she shook her head, and a little piece of gold glitter fell from her eyelid onto the white bedspread, simultaneously an easy fix and an irreversible stain. 

“I hate having to see my family,” she said. “They suffocate me.”

“You could stay.”

She laughed humorlessly, asked, “Stay where?”

And he remembered that she lived at the inn, that her parents tethered her there to keep her from going underground in some part of Europe. One lost daughter was plenty, but he wished that he could call a travel agent, book them two tickets straight to Vienna. Wouldn’t she love that city? The art, the opera, the horses - he thought she might like horses - the city would be perfect for her. Had she ever traveled there while she stayed in Salzburg? Just a train trip away, she could stay for the day and then head home in the evening, back to Clark’s mother’s house, back to where she took her tea in the mornings while looking out at the castle there. He wanted to take her back. Though she never told him so, he knew that she wanted to go back. He still had the money he made from his teaching job at his previous college; if she kept enough cash on her, if she had credit cards her parents rarely controlled, then they could make it together. But only for the next week. Though he would take her from the family that suffocated her, he wouldn’t take her from her education. 

As he went to propose an outlandish adventure to her, he found her palm on his cheek, and she was kissing him, her body canted toward his, the silk of her dress touching his jacket, the warmth of her body against his own. She kissed like heaven. When he reached for her, she came to him, his palms against her hips, such warm skin, so alive, and he wanted to pull her to his chest, feel her heartbeat against his. He wanted her living body. He wanted to feel her move. He wanted to hear every last one of her thoughts, ranging from the topic of her sister’s marriage to alchemical formulas to the best way to remove smoke dust from an old painting to why she chose this specific dress tonight. He wanted to touch her, he wanted so badly to touch her, and when she reached for one of his hands, brought it over her breast, he sunk against her, the ferociousness of desire, and he didn’t want to kill her, not at all, wondered if he had ever wanted to in the first place or if he’d instead been entranced and had had no other way to describe why.

But he pulled back from her, went to kiss the smooth marble of her neck, he stopped, watched the way her muscles moved beneath skin, and no, he was wrong to desire her. He didn’t desire her. No, he wanted to kill her. He wanted to kill her, and he couldn’t kill her now, at least not right now, he could still kill her after kissing her but couldn’t kill her in this Alibi, and what did that even _mean?_ Whose house was this? Why had he come tonight? He should have stayed home. At this rate, he would have to find a new school before the end of the year, and he couldn’t manage that, not again. Not again. 

“Is something wrong?” 

Looking up at her, he saw the warmth in her cheeks, the golden highlights, the horrible earnestness in her eyes, and his hand was still on her breast, so he took it back quickly, jerking away from her.

“I can’t do this,” he said, then took his mask back and stood, staggered from the room, pulled open the door while he saw her stand in his peripheries, the expression on her face uncomfortable. 

And it was three flights of stairs before he managed his way back to the party, this house a tangled mess of beautiful rooms and never-ending hallways, and now the boys were joining the girls in a kind of drunken chaos in the main room, the music loud and shaking the walls, alcohol softening hard lines, dancing and drinking and shaking. The boys shrugged off their coats, loosened their ties; the girls continued dancing, sometimes against a man and other times not, a big mass of hot bodies fogging windows, warmth in a sea of winter. He needed to leave this party, and thankfully, he knew that no one would miss him as he headed for the front door.

He made the mistake of looking back at the party as he brought his hand against the front door, and in the midst of the gyrating crowd, a blur of bodies about which he would never care, he saw her, a golden woman surrounded by a dark purple blur, an angel in the dark, her mask back on, and though her face was covered, he could see in her a quiet kind of anger and sadness, the want for an explanation. He had an erection. She held eye contact with him, and then, he pulled open the door and left the party.

* * *

He cooked rabbit for Thanksgiving in an attempt to make the day feel special. Rosemary and thyme, fresh-baked bread, slaving over food felt spiritual because the decadence was in both the creation and consumption. The night beforehand, he’d completed all of his work for the week, had even started on some of the papers and laboratory assignments due in December. He wanted something to dig his teeth into. He wanted to lose himself in something new.

On Monday, Bedelia hadn’t come to Latin, nor had plenty of other students. Though he stared at her usual seat and wondered if she’d gone home early for the holiday, he doubted she would bother. Was she avoiding him? No, she wasn’t the type to do such a thing, and he assumed that, of the two choices, she would choose to avoid her parents over avoiding him. Though he went toward the gas station on his walk home from class, intent on calling her number at the inn from the Quik Chek, he stopped himself, changed course toward his apartment, for he didn’t know what he say to her. _I’m sorry,_ he could say, _I can’t kiss you because I’m intent on killing you. I’m so intent, in fact, that I’ve sketched you multiple times in order to plan where the best places to stab you would be, so as not to ruin your meat. Right now, there aren’t any cuts drawn, but I think I’ll add them tonight, or tomorrow night, or maybe the night after. I think I prefer the drawings without the cuts for now._

So, he ate rabbit on Thanksgiving. He ate alone at his desk because he didn’t own a dining table. He looked out the window and toward the empty, overcast streets, where the leaves had all fallen off of the trees and the skyline seemed to crave snow. These were dismal months, the sun setting at four in the afternoon, harsh winds making his walks to and from campus abysmal, the inadequacy of his one peacoat making itself clear. As he ate, he thought of a kitchen table, dark wood, scarred in places from dinners of the past, and he thought of her on the other side of the table, switching her knife and fork with her right hand in that American way, Kubrick stare as she looked up at him from her plate. He wanted to make her dinner. He wanted to touch her body again. Or maybe he should invite her for dinner at the inn again instead, sit next to that big fireplace, order every appetizer on the menu and then the most expensive entrees. A whole bottle of fine wine, the kind that couldn’t be bought by the glass, the kind that would make her lips curl in pleasure, and her eyes would flash golden against the brightness of the fire, and he would ask her to take him upstairs, and she would give a fateful half smile as she said yes. 

On Friday, he sketched her again, four drawings now, legs crossed while she wore mini-skirts, the softness of her sweaters, heeled shoes impractical for the weather, the beauty mark above her lip, sharp brows and long lashes. He didn’t want to add the knife marks.

On Saturday, he thought of other girls. There was a quiet one in his anatomy laboratory; she wouldn’t be missed. Or maybe he should opt for a man this time, yes, that would be much smarter, he would look in his Dostoevsky class for a man worth killing. Though no one there stuck out to him, he thought that that was a good thing, that unimpressionable men would be the better targets. Would anyone miss them? Yes, girlfriends, mothers, raging fathers who would finally admit to having emotions, but no one in their immediate surroundings would miss them, and that was what he needed most, that anonymity, enough silent presence to keep anyone from looking for them for the designated two weeks before parents called the school and asked why their child had stopped writing home. Smudging lines on a fifth sketch of Bedelia, he longed to be near her again, and he couldn’t kill her, not now, not given that they were friends, and he knew that Clark would search for her, Andy too, and there were all of the men at the party, and there was no alibi, no way for him to slip through the cracks of this world they all lived in together. He couldn’t kill Bedelia because she’d become inconvenient, and that was his only reason why not to kill her. 

On Sunday, he realized that he needed to apologize to her. A kiss followed by a sudden exit from a party, that was inelegant and impolite, and he needed to apologize to her. He needed to tell her that he only wanted to be friends, for he only wanted to be friends, he very much wanted to be just friends. Was she back from the break? This time, he went to the pay phone and paid a dollar a minute to call her, and though he was sent through the inn’s switchboard, no one in her room picked up. Maybe she was waiting until Monday morning to return to school, but why would she do that? Didn’t she want to leave her family’s home? Weren’t they suffocating? Or maybe she wouldn’t return at all, and in a week, some housekeeper would come to collect her things from her room at the inn, and if he asked Clark about her, Clark would tell him some story of parental control, the whole Austria thing, two runaway daughters were two too many, and Bedelia would no longer be continuing her education at Silverleaf. He called again, but still, no one picked up the phone, so he sunk back into his coat, the snow-sky above thick with intent, the air cold as he walked back to his apartment. When - if - he saw her at Latin tomorrow, he would try to talk to her, but it was no use looking for her now. 

He finished the paper that would be his Dostoevsky final, not due for another month, and then, he looked out his window, and cars were rushing through the streets, students coming back from the holiday, taxis coming in from the city, the college regaining life and color. _I can walk to the inn,_ he thought, for he had both the physical ability and the lack of other more pressing matters to attend to, so he put on his coat, wore a hat and mittens because the walk was long, and set out for the inn, watching as cars pulled into different drives for the college, students in residence and adjacent apartments, first-years and fourth-years alike returning to their studies. She must have returned to the inn by now. Then, snow began to fall, just little flakes, the kind that enticed those who had never seen snow before but bored those who knew that this wouldn’t stick and instead would be an inconvenience. He pressed on in the dark. If he hurried, then maybe they could share a late dinner together.

But then, a hand clapped over his mouth, an arm wrapping around his midsection and two coming to his legs, and before he could cry out, he was being gagged and shoved into a sack, the bag impossible to move in, a tie at his ankles tightly shutting him out from the world. Though he tried to squirm away, there were multiple sets of arms grasping at the bag, and he was being carried elsewhere, he couldn’t determine which direction, the figures holding him were silent only until they reached a loud staircase. Was this cement? A basement? Had Tina Frey's friends found out what he'd done? Were they going to do the same to him? Though he didn’t want to let fear overtake him, he couldn’t bring air into his lungs, was gasping his breaths, and then, fluorescent lights came on above him, and he could see a bit through the sack, cloaked figures, a few leading up ahead and maybe five or six holding onto him. They were underground somewhere; he caught a glimpse of a sign he couldn’t read, something about asbestos. _The tunnels,_ he thought, then remembered Bedelia across from him in the dining hall, black-and-white tiled floors, slouchy white sweater, black tights, snow in her hair. He wished he could see her again. He wished he could apologize.

The figures dumped him into a folding chair in a sectioned-off room, the ones who hadn’t carried him shutting and locking a door behind them. They pulled his ankles from the sack first, then wrapped loud, sticky tape around his legs, tying him down, and as they went up his body, they tied back his wrists too, trapped him. Though he thought about relenting, about trying to kick over the chair, he knew that the door was locked and that one collision against this floor could kill him, so if these figures didn’t harm him during his escape attempt, then he himself surely would. When they finally pulled the sack over his head and off of his face, he looked out at the fluorescent basement to find a group of hooded figures, ten exactly, all dressed in black robes and concealing their faces. _The Meadowlarks,_ he thought, remembering what Bedelia had said in the cafeteria that day. _The oldest secret society, founded by Henry Silverleaf._

In a quick succession, the figures removed their hoods, and at first, the men looked vaguely familiar, maybe students in his classes, but as the group continued to reveal itself, he saw the recognizable Maverick, the Luca who was insulted by John’s comments, the Franco who smoked out windows at the Alibi, and then, Clark and Andy, standing right next to each other, their height difference even more remarkable in these dark robes, and then, a woman with long, blonde curls and bags beneath her eyes. Though she oftentimes wore kohl, maybe mascara, she hated face makeup. No more gold, no more shimmer, just Bedelia standing alongside these men, her black robe matching theirs, and though some of the men wore robes that were clearly a bit too long, hers had been tailored to fit, the hem barely covering the wedge of the heels she wore. This was the Society of the Meadowlark, the oldest society at the school, a group created by the school’s founder himself, and from everything he’d heard, he’d assumed they didn’t accept women, but there she was, wearing the same robe, standing alongside these men as a clear equal. Maybe she’d been the first woman ever accepted. Maybe there would be a second this year.

“Initiate,” Andy said, his voice resounding, the echo off of these walls making Hannibal wince.

And then Hannibal felt his night begin to blur.


	6. The du Maurier Compound

Though her mother was all too willing to send a car, Bedelia preferred to travel home by train. _It takes so much longer, honey,_ her mother would lament, and in her mind Bedelia would echo back the same sentence, using that as her reasoning. Executive class, an employee storing her luggage on her behalf, a cabin all to herself and espresso served, the train marked her last bit of calm before she returned home to the du Maurier compound - her word for it, not her family’s - and inevitably needed to smile through a series of sly insults and questions about either her graduation prospects or her fertility. Though she wasn’t one for performance art, she’d seen a woman in New York perform as if scraping her uterus from her body with a prison-sharpened plastic spoon; whenever Bedelia sat down to Thanksgiving dinner, she thought of that performance, wished she could stand on the long mahogany dining table and reenact it.

Or maybe she was being dramatic. _So dramatic,_ that was what her father would always say. Angela was the aimless one, Lydia the impulsive, and Bedelia was dramatic, so dramatic. At least Angela and Lydia were sometimes referred to as intelligent or driven despite all of the evidence otherwise. Now, Angela was a mother to two, a cherubic and fat-faced three-month-old in her arms as Bedelia was welcomed into the marble entryway of the house, and of course, Lydia was nowhere to be found, but still, her father would smile as he mentioned _his girls,_ then insist that Angela was, despite the two children and her clear lack of employment, determined to become a doctor. And as the staff took Bedelia’s suitcase up to her room, as they took off her coat and scarf and tussled up her hair in greeting, Angela smiled that thousand-watt smile, she used ridiculous whitening treatments in retainers all night, she had enough money for veneers that Bedelia started wondering if all of them were real, and Angela excused herself, said, _sweetheart, I would hug you if I could,_ the oh-so-maternal softness in her voice making Bedelia want to wretch. Though all womanhood was an elaborate performance, she didn’t understand why women like Angela decided to go above and beyond in their performances, sleeping with their teeth covered in plastic and wearing a full face of makeup paired with a casual cashmere sweater and a pair of fashionably baggy pants - so she hadn’t lost the weight yet, that would be the weak spot of hers, Bedelia made the mental note - that would never see the light of day and would instead be worn as _house clothes,_ solely for cooking, cleaning, and child-rearing. Thankfully, Angela’s false eyelash was coming loose; the frayed edge of it made Bedelia smile, which Angela mistook for sisterly fondness.

Back when Angie went to Columbia to study science, Bedelia still liked her. Before, Angie had gone with Bedelia and their father to hunt, had owned a pair of muck boots and had prided herself on being able to shoe her own horse, but then she met - and he materialized alongside his wife, tastefully taller than Angela, the smile of an executive and a haircut that cost at least two-hundred dollars, v-neck sweater and slacks to show that he was professional even in his own home - Drake Gabel, the affluent and driven son of a neonatal surgeon in New York. _Tell me,_ Bedelia thought, _who can resist a man whose father saves babies?_ Angie was taken with him immediately, and to Bedelia’s surprise - but not Lydia’s, who suspected him of _something_ from the time Angie first mentioned him over the phone - the takenness quickly turned to obsession, to wondering is she ought to drop out of college, to falling pregnant and thus having a perfect excuse not to pursue her studies any longer. _Dad’s going to kill you, Angie,_ Bedelia told her after the announcement, just to Bedelia at first, Bedelia held steadfast to that moment, before anyone else Bedelia knew that Angie was pregnant, and Angie told her, _oh, he won’t care, he wants me married anyway,_ then added, _and stop calling me Angie._

So now Drake was Bedelia’s brother-in-law, and she hated him for seemingly no reason but fervently nonetheless, the coiffed brunette rivaling Angela’s coiffed blonde, a Christmas card couple, a magazine pairing. The baby Angela held would never be asked what it wanted to be when it grew up, for it didn’t need to _be_ anything. Soon enough, it would be carted off to a nanny from which it would learn Spanish, French, _whatever_ \- Bedelia learned German that way, her saving grace in Austria - and Angela would next speak to her child on, say, its fourteenth birthday, when she would detail menstruation and sex to the child, then force the child to apply to a list of certain boarding schools. The closest thing this child would know to maternal warmth was the sense of forbiddenness that surrounded its mother’s dressing room, her armoire, her neatly folded clothes in her walk-in closet, her expensive makeup that she called _putting on my face_. It wasn’t warmth, per se, a strange empty coldness instead, an unstoppable window draft in winter. There wasn’t anything Bedelia could do to change that.

And they edged her into the parlor, where her mother and senile grandmothers were sitting and holding tea, and Drake patted the back of her shoulder - _gross_ \- and asked one of the staff to fetch Bedelia a drink, but Bedelia didn’t want anything to drink, she’d had coffee on the train, all she really wanted was to go upstairs and sleep until Thanksgiving dinner was served tomorrow evening. Luckily, everyone was more interested in the baby than in Bedelia - Angela’s other child must’ve been stowed away with a nanny somewhere, no longer a novelty and instead an inconvenience. The girl’s name was Kelly, and Bedelia had a painted wooden giraffe she’d bought in Stockholm to give her - and because this was the women’s room, because Drake wanted to prove he could be welcome here, he made a sly comment, _it seems the women of this family are only capable of creating other women._ So Angela had two girls, then. No one had told Bedelia about this new baby girl, for by the time Bedelia had returned from Europe, not even stopping home first, the baby’s birth had changed from being a celebration to being an encumbrance, sleepless nights for the parents, Drake back to work immediately not because he needed the money but because he lacked interest. When Bedelia called home to inform her mother that she would be attending Thanksgiving dinner - last year, she went with Clark to his father’s in New Haven - her mother mentioned the baby, to which Bedelia had asked, _baby? What baby?_ But Angela was Angela now, not Angie, so of course Bedelia didn’t know about the baby. To some degree, Bedelia didn’t care, and to an even higher degree, neither did the baby’s parents. 

But they all were girls, all of the du Maurier children and grandchildren, and someone made a joke at Bedelia’s expense, that she would need to produce an heir, and she made the mistake of saying _I’m never having children_ and making the grandmothers fret and cross themselves. Of _course_ she would have children. Of _course_ she would fornicate with her properly selected affluent husband on a wedding night scheduled based on her lunar cycle, and of _course_ she wouldn’t mind that he finished inside of her within two minutes, maybe less than that, even though she spent hours waxing her cunt and legs and underarms and stomach, even. Of _course_ she would birth his children in a hospital suite alone, for real men didn’t enter delivery rooms. Then, she would raise aggressively gendered children and send them to expensive schools and define her worth based on her fine china, her husband’s yearly income, and the amount she could donate to charity in comparison to other women of her kind. And all of it would be worthwhile, for she’d produced an antiquated, outdated, not-even-legal heir. Though they didn’t actually have a lineage, she still felt the bite of the joke anyway; had she been a boy, her life would have been so disturbingly different.

Her father had wanted boys, as any father in his position would have, but instead, he got Angie, and then, he got Bedelia, and once he got Lydia, he decided to make one of them a boy instead. Because Angie was too pretty, and because Lydia was too young and obnoxious, silent, calculating Bedelia was the obvious choice, and he taught her archery, bought her a gun for her eighth birthday, a hunting knife for her ninth, insisted on taking her on camping trips and teaching her how to properly drink whiskey. Unfortunately, she liked those boyish things, but as she grew up, it became more and more apparent to her father that no number of hunting lessons, no knives or Shakespeare quotations or tobacco-chewing would turn Bedelia into the son he truly wanted, not when she liked skirts, magazines, reading, and makeup too. Of course she couldn’t have both within her. Because she was afraid he would steal them, she used a guide in a library book to create false bottoms in her drawers, secret compartments in her closet, and she kept her bow and hunting knives there, hidden from sight, seemingly given away in favor of more womanly things. Though her father suspected they were hidden when Bedelia gave Kelly, Angie's older daughter, a whittled deer toy for Christmas last year, he at least hadn’t had the interest to comment. 

_Let her hold the baby,_ Bedelia’s mother said, so Angela came over to where Bedelia sat on the white upholstered couch, the room so white, white and golden, white, white, white, she and Angie used to call it the _tampon room_ because it was the color of a tampon, because a little blood would ruin it; the baby felt strange in her arms, she didn’t know if she was holding it correctly, the angle was awkward and the thing in her arms could _move_ , breathed even, like a rabbit in a snare trap but relaxed, lethargic. Soft yellow baby blanket, little hat over the baby’s head because no girl in the du Maurier family would _ever_ be permitted to be bald, the baby was, in some strange and disgustingly human way, cute. Bedelia could understand the appeal when babies were like this; she could hand the baby back if it fussed, and in the meantime, all she needed to do was have hospitable arms, and though she wasn’t one to be actively soft, she liked that the child didn’t ask her to be aggressive, to assert herself, to prove her worth and instead asked for a place to rest. But the breathing made her uncomfortable, made her watch the little chest for every rise and fall, made her tense if there was even the tiniest hesitation between the exhalation and next inhalation. Though she feared children being raised as she had been, she feared even more a sense of maternal love, caring so deeply for a child that fit in her arms, being willing to kill for her child if she needed to. She doubted she could love anyone that much. 

She had never liked feelings, but now, she hated them intensely, hated that she’d kissed a boy at a party when he wasn’t even interested, when all he wanted her for was access to the Meadowlarks. Couldn’t he have at least wanted her for sex instead? If all he’d wanted was sex, she could let go of that, but it was manipulation, what he’d done. All along, she’d thought he was attracted to her, that he liked her, that he actually found her interesting, but Clark had warned her that there might be men like this one, that she presented a new experience within the society, that things might happen that hadn’t happened before. Still, she hadn’t expected there to be one so soon, but there one was. She wished she hadn’t spent so much of her time on him, and more than that, she wished she hadn’t liked him.

But it was just a kiss, and this was just her sister’s baby, and she would be gone on Friday, taking the train back home because Clark needed her on Saturday and Sunday. She’d lied to her mother and said that she’d had classes she couldn’t miss on Monday and Tuesday even though she skipped every class she could’ve gone to. If Andy were here, he’d tell her something that would make her feel better, but he wasn’t here, so she was left to hold her sister’s baby while the rest of the room cooed and softened. She wished she could disappear.

Thankfully, the baby fussed, so Angela took the baby, excused herself to her bedroom upstairs, and Bedelia said she needed some time to wash up before dinner, so she followed Angela at a fair distance, Drake left downstairs because fathers should _never_ be involved in child-rearing. Bedelia’s bedroom was on the second floor, the hardwood beneath her feet polished to a perfect shine, the big double-doors to every bedroom shimmering and gold before her. When Angie approached her own bedroom, Bedelia watched as the door opened as if by magic, and there was a short, slender woman, blonde and wearing jeans and a tee shirt with something written on the front, her hair in a braid. Not foreign enough to be a nanny, no, this woman was American and too comfortable and casual with Angie to be some kind of staff. Furrowing her brow, Bedelia watched as the woman tucked Angie and the baby into the bedroom, concealed them both from sight.

 _Strange,_ she thought as she opened the door to her own bedroom, and everything was in its exact right place, the hand-sewn red quilt pulled tight on her canopy bed, her golden armoire polished, the two works of art - a Cezanne and a lesser known Picasso sketch - acting as the only decorations on the walls. And the window seat, the beautiful window seat, it was large enough that she could sit with her back against one wall and her feet flat against the other, looking out at their land beyond, and if she especially wanted privacy, she could shut the thick curtains, trap herself in there. And the curtains were closed now too, but slowly, they opened up, and Bedelia stilled, hands reaching for a knife she hadn’t put in the pocket she didn’t have, and when someone stepped out from the curtain, she stared incredulously at them, then softened.

“Lydia?” she asked, dumbfounded, for it was her idiot sister, plain and simple, blonde hair with bangs cut so severely as if she’d trimmed them ten minutes ago with kitchen scissors. “Where have you _been?_ ”

“Hiding,” Lydia gave, arms crossing over her chest. Cashmere sweater, one of Angie’s old ones from before pregnancy fattened her into womanhood. “Obviously.”

And Lydia reached into the back pocket of her jeans and took out a package of cigarettes, a lighter with trashy purple flowers printed on its side.

“Do you mind?” she asked, holding out a smoke for Bedelia.

“Of course I mind,” Bedelia said, then walked over to her sister and took the cigarettes and lighter, shoved them into the drawer of the armoire. She pushed her sister the way boys on the playground pushed each other, then asked, “Why didn’t you tell me where you were?”

“Oh my god,” Lydia said, elongating the last word, _god-uh._ “Calm down.”

“I haven’t heard from you in…”

And she didn’t want to do the math, didn’t want to think about how long she’d imagined her sister abducted and filleted in some dark alley in Europe, just beyond Bedelia’s reach, and she didn’t want to think about Lydia’s entrails, and bones with DNA-matching so that families could bury their loved ones, and how boys in clubs tended to do reckless and disastrous things. She didn’t want to think about Stockholm. 

“Well, I’m here now,” Lydia gave, throwing up her hands, conceding. “Just don’t tell Mom and Dad.”

“Why not?”

“‘Cause I snuck in.”

Bedelia closed her eyes in annoyance, feeling let-down.

“And why did you do that?” she asked.

“I needed food and a place to crash,” Lydia shrugged off, “and this time of year, people go home to see their families, so I can’t stay on anyone’s couch. Hence, I am here.”

“How did you get in?”

And Lydia gave Bedelia a look, _you can’t be serious,_ and said, “Walked around to the back gate, climbed up the trellis. You know I always leave my window unlocked.”

Bedelia had wondered this in their teenage years: had Lydia been predisposed to bad behavior simply because her bedroom window helped her sneak out? And had Bedelia become a closed-off person because she could hide in her window-seat for hours without having any of the household staff find her? And had Angie become the strange, unrecognizable _Angela_ because her windows were tall and wide and opened like books but were always kept closed because someone could fall to their death if they only leaned slightly out?

“If you bring me food,” Lydia said, crossing her arms again, “then I’ll do whatever weird favor you want.”

And though she couldn’t think of any weird favors, she knew she would bring her sister food anyway, for no matter what horrors this family put her through, she knew that she would never be able to stop loving them, as daft and abused as that might seem.

“Who’s the girl in Angie’s bedroom?” Bedelia asked, a half-favor.

A smile bloomed on Lydia’s face, a laugh bubbling over her lips, and she said, “Get this. Angie hired a _wet nurse._ ”

“A wet nurse?”

Though Bedelia didn’t know the specifics, she figured that that must be illegal in the United States for some reason, maybe disease transmission, maybe something male-created and sexual. 

“Yeah, a full-blown medieval fucking _wet nurse,_ " Lydia said, laughing and shaking her head. “Legit, I think we can call it. I think we can diagnose her with hysteria. I think we can do it.”

“Why would she need one?” Bedelia asked. “Is it really that hard?”

“Asking the wrong person,” Lydia gave, “but also, like, do you really think Angie would get involved in that kind of stuff? Like, at all?”

“No,” Bedelia said, then tried to clarify but couldn’t find the right words.

“So now they’re, like, trapping her in Angie’s bedroom all day, and they bring her up meals and whatever,” Lydia said. “Her name’s Kristine, with a K. She’s really nice.”

Bedelia sighed, not wanting to know more, not wanting to think about what it was like to have three adults and a baby in one bedroom of a many-bedroomed house.

“Is there anything else that I should know?” Bedelia asked, ready for this day to finally end.

“There’s a boy coming over for you tomorrow,” Lydia said. “His name is Clint.”

Bedelia closed her eyes in annoyance again.

“He’s an investment banker. Twenty-three. Works in Boston.”

“Boston?”

“Yeah, I guess Daddy is running low on viable suitors.”

“Is this one gay too?”

“Unfortunately, no!” Lydia said. “He went to high school with Mitch. He’s, like, straight as a Sperry. And his friends jokingly call him _Clit._ ”

“How promising,” Bedelia deadpanned, then pointed to the door. “Out.”

“Impolite!” Lydia said, then slapped Bedelia’s shoulder, went into the drawer for her cigarettes, and slipped out of Bedelia’s room, enveloped once more by this too-big house.

And Bedelia sat down on her bed and thought about blonde boys to continue the bloodline and hated, _hated_ her father, hated that he wanted her married promptly after the example Angie set, hated that her mother wouldn’t intervene, hated that coming home meant plumping her up and sending her off, an infinite coming out party, white dresses on white dresses. She hated that she wasn’t a boy, but she longed not to. And she hated too that she had thought of another man when Clint was mentioned, a man back in a rural town, a man who had returned her kiss as if she meant something to him. How stupid of her, to have a crush at all, and she hated wondering what he was doing right now, if he was having dinner with his own family, if he had family at all. She was particular when it came to friends, but somehow, he managed to find his way into her life, and she hated that she hadn’t been careful, hated that she’d seen all of his gestures as kind. No, men weren’t kind, and they wanted to use her, if not for her looks, her reproductive organs, her money, or her family name, then for her contacts, her experiences, her body. She wondered if men had feelings at all.

But she thought he did, after all, have feelings, and she’d felt as though his feelings were similar to hers, felt as if they matched on some moral plane. After one of his anatomy labs, Clark had told Bedelia about Hannibal, about how nonchalant but amazed he was in wake of the dissections, and she’d thought, _he could watch me kill something. He could watch me kill something and be fascinated._ And what would a man like Clint do in the same situation? She knew already: Clint would look at her in fear, then decide to take drastic measures, maybe illegal or unethical ones, to control her, his methods ranging from violence to drugs. But Hannibal, he would watch her kill a rabbit caught in a snare, and she would look up at him and find him smiling.

She still had a phone in her bedroom. She’d memorized his phone number. If she wanted to, she could call him, could lambaste him and make him understand just how unworthy he was of her, and then, maybe he would apologize. Maybe he would say she was wrong, and for once, she wanted so badly to be wrong. Maybe he would say, _Come back, Bedelia, and share your holiday with me. Tell me about Salzburg. Tell me about Stockholm, though I know you don’t want to. And let me feed you, let me feed you so decadently that you forget every other experience you’ve had on this holiday. Let me prove you wrong._

But she went to the window-seat instead of to the phone, and like Lydia had, she pulled the curtain so that she was shrouded in darkness, cut off from the rest of the world, staring out at the star-filled sky and the forest beyond. Only like this, when she was completely, unavoidably alone, did she feel understood. 

* * *

“Bedelia studies art at Silverleaf,” her mother said over Thanksgiving dinner. 

The household staff was serving food at the long dining table after her father had carved the turkey. No one sitting at the table had cooked this meal, and when they later talked about what they were thankful for, no one would mention the food. 

“Really?” Clint asked alongside her, eyes bright, eyebrows hopping. 

He had very thick eyebrows and very blue eyes. His hair was all Clark Kent and slicked back, and Bedelia thought he looked like an eighth grader at a Sadie Hawkins dance. 

“Yes,” her mother - wearing false eyelashes and a dress bought specifically for this occasion, a dress she would absolutely never wear again - said with a big, wide, practiced smile. “She’s studying art.”

“And chemistry,” Bedelia interjected, for once thankful that men like this disliked women who studied the sciences. She would willingly cut off all of her hair and attend a protest protesting much of anything if it meant that this boy would look at her with disdain.

“Oh, but that’s not your true passion, is it, dear?” her mother asked, that same tight-lipped smile.

 _Mama’s been getting so much Botox,_ Lydia had said last night as they both curled up in Bedelia’s bed, lights off, Lydia wearing Bedelia’s pajamas because neither of them could manage to get into Lydia’s room. _I wish she’d save some for the rest of us. She kind of looks like The Joker._

“No, it’s not,” Bedelia gave, matching the tight-lipped smile.

“I think chemistry is great!” Clint said, smiling and nodding toward her. 

She wanted to roll her eyes, for the only man worse than a conservative economist with blonde hair cut to perfection and a disappointingly sized penis and issues with his father was a liberal economist with blonde hair cut to perfection and a can-do attitude. 

“Did you know,” her father started from the head of the table; for once, he wasn’t smoking his pipe, “that our Angela is trying to become a doctor?”

And Angie smiled at that, and her hair was coiffed into a pretty ballerina bun, and she looked like an _angel_ , such clear skin, such _beautiful_ teeth, such blue eyes! Upstairs, the children were waiting for the house staff to bring them their dinner - or, rather, Kelly, the oldest daughter, was waiting while the wet nurse minded the baby - and Angie was unflappable in their absence, proud of her soon-to-be career, whenever that began. Across the table, Drake raised his eyebrows, and Bedelia watched as Angie’s face fell ever-so-slightly, so easy to miss, and she wanted Drake gone. She never wanted to see Drake again. She wanted to tear out his hair and bring her long acrylic nails through his eyeballs and watch as the aqueous and vitreous humors spilled out across the Thanksgiving spread her mother - or, rather, her mother’s staff - had worked so hard on. She wanted to cover Drake in a blend of whatever acids she could acquire on short notice, changing his features until he was almost just a skeleton, his blood boiling, his skin blistering, his body unrecognizable before she used a saw to tear apart each limb and then stuff said limbs in impulse-bought suitcases left in train station lockers. She wanted to spend her time watching him suffer.

And then dinner was served, the plates for the children - or, rather, the child and wet nurse - were made, and Bedelia thought about the painted giraffe in her suitcase. When she was in Salzburg, Clark had called, saying it was urgent and that he’d booked her on a flight in two hours from Salzburg to Stockholm, asking if she could bring some basic restoration supplies. _We’ve got something big,_ he told her, and as she took a taxi to the airport - she was so excited that she only packed work-clothes and didn’t bother checking a bag - she bounced her legs, shook out her hands, even smiled. Between Clark’s affluence and the beauties of Europe, she figured that this could be a painting from one of many masters, something wretched and beautiful, something discolored enough to be ignored but glorious enough for her restoration to make history. She wanted to roll and unroll cotton and attach it to a paper dowel, then dab on whatever concoction she could manage, see if she could peel back the years between her life and the artist’s. If they talked to the press about this, then she would never have to worry about finding employment. If she made a mark, then she would never need to speak to her family again.

As she walked through the streets of Stockholm, her carry-on bag on her shoulder, her mind filled with oil paints and varnishes and different ways to illustrate human bodies, she found herself in front of a little children’s store, quaint and very Scandinavian, those famous Swedish dollhouses displayed in the window. She went in because she’d yet to find a souvenir for her niece, and while inside, she found the little painted giraffe, and she knew it would match the whittled animals that she’d given her niece already. However, this one would be special because it was from another place, a place that Kelly might one day travel to, a place that had made Bedelia famous in the art world. This one was special because it had been purchased while Bedelia was the most excited she’d ever felt.

But Clark didn’t have any art, and when she opened the door to his apartment, she knew that she could never really shut that door again, that it would always be open for her, that she couldn't force it closed.

“Clint,” Bedelia said midway through dinner. She couldn’t stop thinking about how Mitch, Lydia’s on-again, off-again boyfriend of the last five years, convivially called this boy _Clit_ to his face, and this guy didn’t even mind. “Have you ever been to Stockholm?”

And her mother’s smile faded, and her father would give her a _talking to_ later about this, but Clint perked up at being summoned as if he were an attentive dog, said, “I love Stockholm!”

“Really,” Bedelia said, not asking a question.

“When I was in tenth grade,” Clint said, “my friends and I went to Stockholm. _So_ crazy. We had such a good time.”

“Really,” Bedelia said.

The food was delicious, but there was something about a Thanksgiving meal cooked by household staff that felt wrong to Bedelia. When she shared the holiday with Clark, at least his parents had bothered to peel their own potatoes for the mash.

“Have you ever been?” Clint asked. “To Stockholm?”

With her parents so quiet, she figured she could get away with more. They wanted her to be polite, so if she was polite, then maybe they would let her duck away early.

“Yes,” she gave, daintily cutting meat on her plate, prim and proper, a woman in white for every day until she married. Clint was boring, and after today, she never planned on speaking to him again. “Last summer, I went to Stockholm, and I had a wonderful time.”

And when one of the housekeepers went to take food upstairs to the children - or, rather, Kelly and the wet nurse - Bedelia offered, saying she wanted to say hello to her niece, and though Angela and her parents looked on with disdain, they didn’t object, not after Bedelia had brought up Stockholm, so she lifted up a tray while Clint smiled on, a woman with good carrying arms, proper for babies and his dinner. No, she shouldn’t think of him like that, but then again, she’d been around plenty of men who seemed kind like he did only to find that they wished they’d been alive to vote for Reagan. She knew better than to believe men.

Or maybe she didn’t, and she grimaced as she carried the tray up the stairs. Where would he be now, sitting in his apartment, alone on Thanksgiving? And against her better judgment, against her obvious rejection, she wished she could be there with him, the meal sparse. They would peel their own potatoes. After all, he claimed to be a great cook. She wanted a two-person Thanksgiving in a tiny apartment. She wanted food she’d touched to be served to her, and she wanted a single candle lit between them, one found at Goodwill and purchased for a quarter, and she wanted him to put on a record afterward and wanted to listen to it with him, just listen. Though it was a fantasy, and though she knew better than to indulge in fantasies, she couldn’t come back to her surroundings and think about how her graduation prospects would likely include marriage and nothing else. Despite her privileged surroundings, she still felt as if she needed to break through some barrier, overcome some great problem in her life, and she thought a degree would help her, but instead, her parents invited boys to Thanksgiving dinner, and she thought of a man at Silverleaf, a man who raced away after she kissed him, a man whose weighty hand had felt deceptively proper on her breast. Why had she done that, let him touch her there? At the time, it had seemed as if it were the right thing to do, and he’d been gentle, but now, she remembered his touch as a strange kind of violation, a wince in her memory, still emotionally charged. It was easier, she figured, to hate someone she hadn’t let come close.

In Angela’s bedroom, Kristine was lounging back in a chaise, the baby at her breast while Kelly played on the floor with - and Bedelia smiled as she saw them - her little wooden arc of animals, all whittled in pairs. A Christmas present from last year. Bedelia had only come home for Christmas because Kelly had told Angie and then Bedelia’s mother that she’d missed Bedelia at Thanksgiving. No Christmas with the Sheas, then. As a token of gratitude, Bedelia carved pairs of wooden animals for Kelly, horses and giraffes, elephants and tigers, and though the cuts were sometimes awkward and choppy, the wood had been sanded to a comforting smoothness. Kelly seemed to take the animals wherever she went.

“Oh, thank goodness,” Kristine said from the couch. “You’re an angel, my dear. I’m starving.”

And Bedelia smiled, for the word _starving_ had been silently banned in the du Maurier compound, and had anyone downstairs heard such a thing spoken, they would’ve hushed, maybe even crossed themselves. She liked Kristine already.

“I don’t envy your job,” Bedelia gave, setting the tray down on the dressing table in the room. There was a horrible contrast between Angie’s gold-and-white canopy bed and the changing table, diaper pail, and stack of suitcases holding nothing but children’s supplies. “Having to balance feeding your own child and this one too.”

“Oh, my kids weaned ages ago,” Kristine said, looking down at the baby, tickling its belly. Kelly was silent as she played with her toys on the floor. “Now, it’s just this little one.”

“Does it hurt?”

Bedelia blushed, not knowing why she asked. What a stupid question.

“Sometimes, but more often than not, it doesn’t,” she gave. “Just when the teeth come in or when they’re really hungry.”

Picking up the plate for Kelly, Bedelia headed over to her niece, sat down on the floor with the girl. When Kelly looked up at her, the girl smiled in a small, sheepish way, and Bedelia wished she could hug her right then.

“If you’re in the clean plate club,” Bedelia said, taking the provided fork and knife and starting to cut Kelly’s meat into little pieces, “then I have a present for you.”

And the girl brightened, little pale cheeks looking warm, and Bedelia wanted to take her ribboned blonde hair out of its ponytail, brush her hair. She wondered if Angie ever brushed Kelly’s hair, or if the nanny was the one to do so. Though Bedelia understood having help, she couldn’t fathom bringing a child into the world and then never wanting to brush that child’s hair.

When the baby finished feeding, Kristine brought the baby over to its bassinet, time to settle down, and then went straight for the tray of food, picking up the plate made for her, looking so excited. And in that way, it was a pleasure to starve, so long as one only starved a little; then, the first bite tasted all too good, and she needed to slow herself down, tell herself to savor, savor, savor, and there would be no worry of when the next meal would come, only social obligations getting in her way. She watched as Kristine and Kelly ate and wondered why she’d left half of the food she’d had on her plate downstairs, going untouched. When she snuck downstairs to find dinner for Lydia, she promised herself that she’d scour the refrigerator for some kind of dessert, their mother’s secret indulgences that she would never admit to, and take it upstairs, Bedelia and Lydia sharing a whole cheesecake while they lounged on Bedelia’s bed. 

And Kelly finished the whole plate of food, _good girl_ , and Bedelia squeezed her hand, then stood up and headed to her own room, where Lydia sat in the window seat and read a trashy romance paperback with a thrice-broken spine.

“You haven’t brought me dinner,” Lydia said, not looking up from her book.

Ignoring her sister, Bedelia went into her suitcase and found the painted wooden giraffe, then left without speaking, held the toy behind her back as she sat down again with Kelly.

“Guess which hand,” Bedelia said, holding out two fists for the girl.

Smiling, Kelly tapped Bedelia’s right fist, and surely enough, there was a little wooden giraffe, this one painted and from Sweden, picked up on the greatest morning of Bedelia’s life, the last remaining part of that moment in time. Back then, she’d been so hopeful, so excited, and she’d thought of that excitement when weeks ago she called James from the payphone, begging him not to be a rat. She couldn’t leave a trail, so she called from the gas station to his parents’ ritzy house in the Hamptons, and he told her that she was a scammer, that she’d lied and cheated her way into the society, that the way she’d withheld valuable society information would surely bring the rest of them down. _They found David’s body,_ he told her over the line, almost taunting her, _and you are so fucked._

Reaching out, Kelly hugged Bedelia tightly, little arms wrapping around her body, and Bedelia sat stunned for a moment before hugging the girl in return, patting her back, looking at her little ribboned ponytail and remembering when she was this size, far away from her mother in the same way, banished to a room with a window seat, destined for a life of being courted by rich men from age fifteen onward.

 _Not again,_ she silently promised this girl even though she felt she had no power at all.

* * *

“I think I like Kristine more than I like Angie.”

“I mean, you’d be psycho if you didn’t.”

Lydia had cracked Bedelia’s bedroom window and had been smoking out it when Bedelia returned after offering Kristine and Kelly dessert. By convincing the staff that Kristine deserved a little extra, you know, for _those purposes,_ Bedelia managed two slices of pumpkin pie, a piece of ricotta cheesecake, and a little caramel-chocolate tart. She asked for an extra spoon, and when the staff didn’t question why, she wondered if they already knew that Lydia was here, if they’d kept the secret from the du Maurier patriarch all this time. Sitting on the window seat, they shared a plate of desserts while everyone downstairs talked about something drab, like economics or politics, as if they suddenly had new opinions on such topics.

“Angie’s gone down the rabbit hole,” Lydia said, alternating between a cigarette and the slice of cheesecake. “Or, like, up her own vagina. Your choice.”

“I kind of feel bad for her.”

Lydia laughed, asked, “ _Why?_ ”

“She’s going to regret all of this in a couple of years,” Bedelia gave. “I think Mom regrets it too.”

“It’s her fault she got knocked up.”

Bedelia gave her sister a look, so Lydia rolled her eyes, said, “Fine, I’m blaming her because I hate her and for literally no other reason. You win.”

“Thank you,” Bedelia said, then nabbed the last little piece of the cheesecake. “I just don’t want her to watch us two and end up jealous.”

“Oh, way to flatter yourself.”

“It’s not flattery,” Bedelia gave. “It’s just freedom.”

“She has plenty of freedom. She has a wet nurse, a nanny, a cook, and a penthouse in Manhattan.”

“Yes, but she has to deal with Drake in order to receive those things.”

Lydia raised her eyebrows in contempt.

“Fair point,” she gave. “Stronger than any U.S. marine.”

“Say that in front of Dad, and he’ll knock your lights out.”

“Hence why I haven’t told Dad I’m here, idiot.”

“Do you think you’ll ever come back?”

Shrugging, Lydia gave, “I’m here right now.”

“No, I mean _really_ come back. And stay this time.”

And Lydia was uncharacteristically quiet, and because her fork hovered above the plate, and because the prospect of having to say goodnight to Clint made her wince, Bedelia stabbed at the tart.

“I don’t think you realize that I _can’t_ come back,” Lydia said, and Bedelia stilled because for once her younger sister was being serious. “If I come back here, I’ll die. I don’t think you get that.”

“You won’t _die,_ ” Bedelia gave, for that was, in fact, an exaggeration. “You’ll just...be courted and whatnot. The same that they’re doing to me.”

“Don’t you find that suffocating?” Lydia asked, genuinely asked. “Doesn’t it make you want to jump off the roof?”

Their roof was accessible through a number of drop-down ladders and corridors, and if someone were to jump from that height, they likely would die on impact with the ground. Bedelia had already done the calculations on such a thing.

“Yes,” Bedelia gave, “but things will be better. I’ll finish my degree, and I’ll move so far away from here.”

“But what if you don’t? What if they rope you into something? What if they stop paying your tuition?”

Sighing, Bedelia said, “I only have one more year.”

“Angie only had one more year, too.”

And they heard a loud sound coming from the next room over, so they both glanced to the door, what was that? Had something fallen? And another sound, and it was definitely coming from Angie’s room, and it was rhythmic too, a kind of muffled pounding. Lydia stood up first, leaving the plate of desserts on Bedelia’s lap, and only when Lydia pushed open Bedelia’s bedroom door did Bedelia spring up and follow her. Had Kelly fallen? Was something wrong with the baby? Standing in front of Angie’s door, they listened to that rhythmic sound, tried to figure out what was happening.

Against her better judgment, Lydia nudged the doors open, and on the bed, Angie’s beloved gold-and-white bed, Drake had Kristine in the missionary position, her legs splayed as if she were doing supine yoga, his shirt still on but his pants shed in the corner of the room. His ass was flat and narrow, and if they looked at the proper angle, they could see his anus while he thrust jaggedly into Kristine, and all the while, she stared up at the ceiling, looking bored.

Then, Drake wrapped his lips around one of Kristine’s breasts, and before Bedelia could work out the mechanics of such a thing, whether or not such an action would expel milk, he took a long, hard suck that made his neck tense up and the veins there throb, and Bedelia looked to Lydia, and Lydia looked as if she were about to start laughing. Taking Lydia’s hand, Bedelia dragged her hesitant sister back to the bedroom, shutting the doors behind them and locking too for good measure. When Bedelia closed her eyes in order to regain her bearings, she saw it again, Drake’s acrid mouth wrapping around a breast, the suck so hard that it made a popping sound. The rhythmic thrusts. Did Angie know about this? Given how uninterested Kristine had been, she and Drake couldn’t have been having an affair.

“She hired someone to have sex with her husband!” Lydia squealed, then burst into laughter, bracing herself against one of the walls in Bedelia’s room. “He’s fucking the wet nurse! Oh my god, this is crazy.”

“We can’t assume that,” Bedelia said, shaking her head, dazed. “This could be an affair. We must concede that this could be an affair.”

“Bed, it’s _not_ an affair, and you know it!” Lydia continued laughing and shook her head. “Can you imagine? You have enough money that you let your husband become a human baby. Is that why they needed a wet nurse? _No,_ is that why Angie wouldn’t breastfeed this time? Holy fuck.”

And the popping sound echoed again through the house, Drake taking to the other breast, and Bedelia winced.

“We have to get out of here,” Lydia said, suddenly serious. “Like, _now_.”

“Lydia-”

“Bed, I’m so serious,” Lydia said, nodding quickly. “We need to get out of here. Legit, you’re next. Do you want fucking _Clint_ to bone your wet nurse? Do you? Come _on._ ”

Closing her eyes, Bedelia sighed, and the image came back, so she opened her eyes, and Lydia was rifling through Bedelia’s drawers, then going over to Bedelia’s unpacked suitcase and zipping it back up.

“Lydia-”

“Come on,” she said, and the suitcases were zipped, all ready to go. “You have a phone. Call for a taxi. There’s bound to be trains away from here.”

“We can’t just _leave,_ ” Bedelia gave, shaking her head. “Or maybe you can, but I can’t.”

“They’d stop paying your tuition regardless of whether or not you went downstairs,” Lydia said, and uncomfortably, Bedelia knew that such a thing was true. “Ask Clark for the money. For real. Or just tell them that you and Andy are finally together. They’ll get over the Canadian part eventually, especially once they discover Toronto. Come _on,_ Bed. You can’t stay here. We both can’t.”

And they knew how to sneak out. They knew that the reception area for after dinner wasn’t within sight of the front door. Out front, there was a cab waiting, and Bedelia dragged her suitcase down the du Maurier compound’s front steps, not looking back, not wondering if her parents would find her now. All that Lydia had was a ruffed-up duffel bag, stickers from airports still on top of it. While the cabbie put their luggage into the trunk, Bedelia and Lydia climbed into the backseat, and for the first time since she’d come home, Bedelia finally took a deep breath.

“Train station,” Lydia said even though she’d mentioned that on the phone, “please.”

Then, she turned to Bedelia, said, “I don’t have any cash on me. You’re paying.”

* * *

When she left Lydia on the train platform, Lydia heading to New York while she headed north, Bedelia told Lydia, “Please keep in contact this time.”

“I will,” Lydia said, but while Bedelia sat on the train - economy class, she should’ve called ahead to book something better - she knew that Lydia wouldn’t keep in contact. No, Lydia wouldn’t call, wouldn’t even send a postcard. The next time Bedelia would hear from her sister would be in six months, maybe a year, when Lydia inevitably needed cash or a place to sleep. If Bedelia felt desperate, she could call Mitch, but she knew she would never reach out. No, Lydia didn’t want to be found, and though she didn’t want to, Bedelia knew she needed to respect her sister’s wishes.

There was a half-hour car ride from the station to Silverleaf, and thankfully, Andy had Clark’s car keys, so when the maroon Mercedes 280SL pulled up in front of the station, she sighed in relief, a friendly face, a space she’d been in so many times before. Usually, Clark took the seat in the middle, but for now, it was just Andy driving while Bedelia sat passenger. He could tell that she didn’t want to talk.

“I just need to know that you’re okay,” Andy said as he drove, the world dark around them. One of Clark’s headlights was out. 

She sighed, stared out the too-clean windshield. She almost wished they would hit a deer.

“I’m okay,” she said. “Lydia came home. My sister’s husband is fucking their wet nurse.”

For a moment, Andy was silent, but he managed, “That’s a big sentence to unpack.”

“Have you heard more about David?”

“Bedelia, you’ve been gone for less than two days.”

“Still.”

“No, there’s nothing else,” he gave. “They found bones and managed a DNA match. The skeleton’s incomplete, though.”

“How’s Clark doing?” she asked. “He refuses to talk about it with me.”

Andy sighed, said, “He doesn’t think anything’s going to come of this.”

“We’re all going to go down with it,” she gave. “It’s not a matter of _how_ so much as _when._ ”

“We were careful.”

“Yes, _we_ were,” she said, her tone growing angrier. She needed to calm down. “I can’t vouch for anyone else, though.”

“We shouldn’t even be talking about this.”

“If I asked you to, would you fuck me tonight?”

And he fell silent as she looked at him, a hard swallow, the veins in his neck bobbing.

“I didn’t realize you were that upset,” he gave, maybe insulted, maybe unnerved, maybe just sad. It wouldn’t be the first time. “You’re not telling me something.”

“The proper answer would be either _yes_ or _no._ ”

“Call that guy of yours,” Andy said, staring blankly out at the road, not paying attention though he wanted to seem as if he were. “He’ll do it.”

“I’m not asking him. I’m asking you.”

He sighed, gave, “You know I’m not like that.”

“I don’t care,” she said. “I still don’t care.”

“You’re not even attracted to me.”

“That’s not the point of what I’m asking for.”

“No, Bee,” he gave, and then, they were at the big gate for Silverleaf, not the inn. He stopped and parked the car. If she looked out the driver’s side’s window, she would see Hannibal’s apartment. “Not tonight. Not ever again.”

No, he would say yes the next time he and Clark fought, but she wouldn’t tell him that. He turned off the engine. They weren’t going to go anywhere.

“Just say the word,” Andy said, “and I’ll take you to the inn instead.”

And she leaned forward so that she could look up at the lit window of his apartment, and there, she could see him sitting down at a table of some kind, maybe a desk, and was he working on something for school? No, his pencil flitted around his paper; he was drawing. Watching him, she saw how he smudged lines, sketched and erased, his light a beacon in the rural darkness, a play with him in the spotlight on stage. She didn’t want to fuck him, at least not in the way that she wanted to fuck Andy right now. No, she wanted to tell him about Stockholm. She felt the horrible urge to tell him, for she thought he would understand.

“Take me to the inn,” she said, and Andy turned the key in the ignition.

Hannibal never looked up from his work as they drove away.


	7. The Knife

A haze of sunlight, early morning, overcast. Silverleaf, his apartment. Someone was settling him into his bed. When he saw his hands, blurry and fading, he couldn’t understand that these were his own, that he controlled them, that he could make fists with them if he so desired. The sensation of palms on his shoulders registered distantly, as if he’d felt such a thing in another lifetime. The ceiling above him, his mattress on the broken frame, he was being tucked into bed. Blonde curls, a blur of blue eyes above him, and then, she left at a slow shutter speed, jagged movements out of his bedroom, his apartment door closing behind her. The sun rose, and he was in bed alone.

When he woke, he felt nauseous and dizzy but alert, alert enough to realize that he would shortly be late for Latin; he managed to dress and leave his apartment with only minutes to spare, and by the time he entered the classroom, the other students had already settled, the professor starting to mark a sentence on the chalkboard. While some of the students glanced up at him, watched as he took his notebook and pen from his bag, others kept their eyes on their own papers, only looking up to see the sentence on the board. Across the room, Bedelia rested her elbow on her desk, leaned her chin against her fist, bored before class even had a chance to start.

And he couldn’t pay attention to the lesson, not now, not while he tried to piece together memories of the night beforehand. Had he been drugged? He felt groggy, and his memory came back in bits and pieces, but he couldn’t remember any drugs, couldn’t feel any sore spots from an injection site. Before him, the Meadowlarks had stood, Andy reciting from memory some long-told traditional speech, and there was something about Saturday evening. Something about Saturday evening. Would he need to meet them somewhere? On the board, the professor had written a series of translations, and every student but Hannibal had written those translations down in their notebooks. Quickly, he wrote down the translations too, then glanced at Bedelia and found her checking her watch for the time, her leg humming with anxiety. She too felt trapped in this class. 

Once the class had been dismissed, he, waited for Bedelia to leave, then followed her out, reached for the sleeve of her coat to get her attention. She flinched away from him, looked up at him with disdain.

“Don’t touch me,” she gave, aghast that he would even try.

“Were you at my apartment this morning?” 

He tried to keep his words quiet, for there were other students milling about in the hallways, dawdling to their next classes. Though he couldn’t remember the entirety of the Meadowlarks’ policy on initiate secrecy, he remembered enough to know that he wasn't to tell anyone outside of the group about his status as an initiate.

Sighing, she gave, “Serial killers own more furniture than you do. I left the envelope on your desk.”

And she pulled away, headed out into the quadrangle, but he followed her there as well, her heels clicking against the brick pathways. Today, they had a snow-sky above, all one grey color, and she wore a red beret over her blonde curls, a matching pair of leather gloves over her hands. She shrugged into her camel-colored coat, her breath like smoke in front of her cold, pale lips. Though she didn’t want to talk to him, she stopped anyway, begrudgingly gave him her attention.

“What envelope?” he asked.

Rolling her eyes, she said, as if it were obvious, “Your invitation.”

“Invitation?” 

“Saturday.”

Yes, he did remember something about _Saturday,_ even if he couldn’t remember specifics.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked. “At the party. All those boys...were you screening people?”

She huffed, said, “It was just a party. One of many.”

Between them, their unspoken kiss occupied too much space, and when he met her gaze, he could see the weight of it, the strangeness of his rejection, how he would never be able to fully explain it to her. Would it ever be a comfort for her to know that he rejected her because he confused a desire to consume her with a crush? And in the end, how was a crush not a kind of desire for consumption? Though he knew her to be intelligent, far more intelligent than he would ever be, he doubted she would be able to think in such terms.

She sighed, looked away from him, said, “Look, you had my vote, okay? The rest is up to you and you alone. You can stop this act now. You can stop using me for leverage.”

“ _What?_ ” he asked, but she’d already turned away from him and headed in the direction of her next class, and he remained still in the same spot, still disoriented from the morning, remembering the slow but jagged way she left his apartment that morning, remembering how she put him to bed. 

He held his office hours in a daze, thankful for a lack of student attendance, and when he went to his anatomy lecture, he kept thinking of Bedelia, of what she’d said, the invitation left on his desk, whatever _her vote_ meant. Did the Meadowlarks vote initiates in, passing around a student photograph and having a conversation around a round table? Did the student need a majority vote, two-thirds of the room, unanimous support? But he’d had Bedelia’s vote despite the awkward kiss, so maybe she thought he fit in there. Maybe she’d thought he would fear that the aftermath of their kiss would sway her against voting for him, but he knew that she stayed objective, that such a thing would only sway her in the most drastic of cases. And he'd followed her to that bedroom not because he wanted to use her for leverage but because he wanted to kiss her and kill her, or really just kiss her, no matter what lies he told himself.

But he’d rejected her. After she kissed him, he pushed her away, and he left the Alibi as quickly as he could, and he gave her no explanation. Would she understand? No, she wouldn’t, and he’d been close like this before, thinking that someone would understand what he did and even accept him, close enough to get himself caught. He would be stupid to trust Bedelia du Maurier. As he left his anatomy lecture, headed toward the main gate of the campus and back to his apartment, he knew that he would have to use her incorrect explanation as the truth: he’d courted her solely to gain her vote, and when she kissed him, he realized that he lacked feelings for her altogether, then fled to avoid embarrassment. 

Before he reached the gate, he stopped short, for beneath a security light were four students crowded like moths in the winter darkness, the weather report calling for snow tonight, the air thick with anticipation. The tall, brooding student flicked an old-fashioned lighter and let the shorter boy light a cigarette between his own teeth, then take a puff. They wore long, dark coats and expensive boots, Italian leather, lined for winters in the northeast, this country being one that that leather had never been meant to see; scarves around their necks, school colors, patriotic colors, a family crest, leather gloves that slid on tight. The third man motioned _come here_ to the tall man holding the lighter, _light me up too_ , and he held his cigarette down to the flame, then brought the smoke to his lips and held it there while he pulled off his gloves, shoved them into his coat-pocket. A woman stood alongside them, her cigarette burned halfway-down, and she stared up at the roof of one of the school’s buildings, no, not the roof, at the full moon above instead, her arms half-crossed, her curls far from fading, her red beret perched perfectly atop her head. The third man spoke to her, and she rolled her eyes in a predictable way, her being exuding annoyance for this guy, perpetually bothered by his presence. And the other two seemed equally annoyed, meeting each other’s momentary gaze and then laughing halfheartedly, wondering if they should speak up without wondering at all.

Clark blew smoke in Andy’s face; Andy fanned the smoke away. The third man nudged Bedelia, and she closed her eyes in annoyance, flicked ash in his direction though he seemed not to notice. They were untouchable. They were beautiful and rich. When Hannibal observed them from afar, they seemed as if they were under a spotlight, the delightful, the wonderful, the gorgeous. They were pristine examples of academics, from different backgrounds that weren’t very different at all, studying diverse subjects that each were an equal kind of useless. They were free to explore the academic world because they would never in their lives face real consequences. He wondered if any of them had ever paid a bill before, if any of them had ever had a credit card rejected, if any of them had known a life without a credit card. Did they sign lease agreements, or did their parents do that on their behalf? If he asked them, he knew they would each be able to point to _my family’s lawyer,_ give a name and phone number, then plead the Fifth with practiced ease. Though he wanted so badly to hate them, to detest them for these silent un-crimes, he instead found himself drawn to them like a moth to a flame, wishing to be warmed by their spotlight. They were a calculated kind of magic, and he wondered if he might be able to create that magic for himself. With their effortlessness, they made it all seem so possible, so achievable. With the right friends, he might be like them. With them, he might be fantastic.

Andy beckoned for them to head beyond the gate, so they walked out of their little spotlight and toward the campus's exit, heading somewhere together. At a modest distance, Hannibal followed, and though he couldn’t make out much of their conversation, he heard that the third man, someone he hadn’t seen at the party but had seen the night beforehand, was named James. By the time Hannibal walked beyond the gate, he couldn’t see in which direction the pack had headed, all that remained of them being the cigarette smoke and the scent of wet wool, tiny traces of beautiful people. He looked both ways, crossed the street, walked past the Quik Chek and ducked into his apartment building. 

His landlord’s television still droned on; the upstairs neighbors were having sex at an elderly person’s dinner time. When he turned on the lights in his apartment, he looked to his desk and stilled, for there was a cream-white envelope sealed with wax atop the secondhand wood, and one of his knives had been put through the paper, stabbed at an angle into the desk, holding the invitation in place. She had gone through his things. What had she found? His sketches, had she looked at this sketches? No, the books were all in their same haphazard places, but she had gone through his closet. She’d gone through his clothes. She’d rifled through his satchel and found one of his knives. Had she found others? Did she suspect him of violence? Quickly, he opened the freezer, and thankfully, the last of the calculus girl was still hidden behind frozen vegetables, far from sight. But the knife, she’d found one of his knives, and she’d stabbed it into his secondhand desk, damn her. As he pulled the knife from the wood, he imagined her doing the inverse that morning while he slept only a few feet away, while he didn’t notice.

Using the knife to open the invitation, he found a thick piece of white paper with printed cursive text inside, an invitation back to the Alibi on Saturday night, seven o’clock sharp, don’t be late. Would this be another party? The cursive text gave few details, the stationery’s only mention of the Meadowlarks being a tiny illustration of a bird across the top of the invitation, and he wondered what they could ask him to do. Would this be like a fraternity initiation, with illegal but boring activities and lots of alcohol? Or would this be intellectual, trying to gauge his intelligence, determining if he was fit to be a member of their organization? And given their secrecy, what would happen if they deemed him unfit for their group?

He turned the invitation over, and to his surprise, he found a haphazard note left on the back, the knife’s hilt having gone through the middle of the message. Because he’d seen her notes, he could easily recognize the script as being Bedelia’s handwriting.

_BRING A KNIFE_

Smiling to himself, he wondered if she really wished to be rid of him at all.


	8. The Agreements

Three floors up in the student residence hall, Bedelia stood in front of one suite, swallowed her pride, and knocked twice. Inside, she could hear music playing, but it wasn’t too loud, so maybe Beverly would hear the knocks. Or maybe this wasn’t even Bev’s room. During her first year at Silverleaf, she and Bev had shared a room a floor up, two girls stuck in a tiny place, and though they hadn’t been well-matched to live together - Bev wasn’t a morning person, and Bedelia hated how Bev’s cell phone would go off throughout the day, a different tone for every notification, and a different ringer for different friends - Bedelia still liked Bev, and she liked even more that she’d maintained one friendship outside of the Larks. Sure, she’d known Clark and Andy long before she’d known about the Society, but at least Bev didn’t know what Bedelia had done in order to become a member. At least Bev thought of her as uptight but a fun person to get drunk with and little else. 

Thankfully, the door opened, and there was Beverly, her long, dark hair tied up in a bun, the sweater she wore looking masculine and not at all like it had originally belonged to her.

“Hey!” she said, ushering Bedelia in. “Long time, right? How was Vienna?”

“Salzburg,” Bedelia corrected as she came into the suite, let Bev close the door behind her. 

Though the dormitories had been cold, small, and dismal, these suites for the students beyond first year had plenty of space, a wide main room with a tiny kitchen area, as much as a single induction burner with a sink and a mini-fridge alongside could count as a _kitchen_ , at one end of the main room and a couch and television set up next to the big, wide window at the other end. Between the couch and the kitchen was one door, and on the opposite side of the main room were two doors, one presumably to the bathroom and the other to Beverly’s suitemate’s bedroom. Bev and her suitemate had decorated the mini-fridge with magnets about women’s empowerment, and flashing orange-and-black Halloween lights were still up on the windowsill. And their view happened to be one of few good ones from the student residence; they could see the scholars' garden from here, the surrounding firs covered in snow. Over top of the couch, someone had folded up a granny-square crocheted blanket as well as a fleece blanket printed with a sports team’s logo and tied all around the edges, and two novelty pillows, one in the shape of an avocado and the other Pompompurin from Hello Kitty. So far as college living spaces went, this place seemed benign, normal, and shockingly clean.

“Yeah, _Sound of Music_ and whatever,” Beverly gave, making little pinching claws with her hands, offering to take Bedelia’s coat and hang it on one of the hooks by the door. “Plan on sticking around?”

“Yes,” Bedelia said, shrugging out of her coat and handing the coat to Beverly, “if you don’t mind.”

“No, not at all,” Beverly said, hanging Bedelia’s coat and then heading toward the couch, gesturing for Bedelia to follow her. “I’m putting off an orgo assignment. Do you have Connors? Sheesh.”

Beneath Bedelia, the couch was soft, too soft, fourth-hand and worn, the beds and closets in the rooms supplied by the school but these main rooms in the suites left open, this couch probably having been inherited from the last people who lived in this place. At least Beverly and her roommate had cleaned the thing up, and added those cute but ridiculous pillows on top too. 

“No, I had Matthews,” Bedelia gave, “and she was fine.”

“I keep having cross country meets, right?” Bev practically blended into this couch, sitting in a way that looked uncomfortable, one foot resting on the couch and her other leg strewn out front, the neck of her too-big sweater falling open over her shoulder. “And I bring all these _get out of jail free_ notes because, you know me, I can’t study on a bus. I get so sick. Do you remember when we took the train last year? Anyway, Connors always gives me shit. Like, sorry I’m a representative of _sports at Silverleaf._ Get fucked.”

Oh, yes, Bedelia could remember Beverly’s cross country practices, a six-in-the-morning wakeup call followed by slumping into bed at eight, sweaty clothes still on, Bedelia’s alarm sounding in half an hour. Though they’d both come in as chemistry majors, they _really_ hadn’t been well-matched as roommates.

“I don’t understand how you can manage two practices a day,” Bedelia gave, telling the truth. Six to eight, then five to seven, four hours a day taken up by running, just running. Bedelia didn’t know how Bev had maintained a 4.0 with that kind of schedule, but then again, she’d spent enough nights trying to sleep through Bev’s one-in-the-morning study sessions to understand how. “I couldn’t do it.”

“Yeah, you’ve told me that a hundred times,” Bev said. “Anyway. What brings you here today?”

Bedelia sighed, shook her head.

“I needed to be around people who aren’t…”

Before Bedelia could find a proper word, Beverly nodded, filled in, “Who aren’t fucking insane.”

Softening, Bedelia said, “They’re not insane.”

“Yeah, keep telling yourself that.”

“Your group isn’t much better.”

Beverly laughed, almost snorted, and shook her head.

“Oh, very funny,” Bev said. “Yeah, _so_ funny.”

“What makes us so different?”

“I never came home covered in blood, did I?”

Bedelia huffed, said, “I told you-”

“ _It’s not blood!_ ” Bev imitated. “Bedelia, I’m not an idiot.”

“You're too afraid of hazing accusations,” Bedelia gave. “That’s all.”

“Yeah, totally,” Bev said sarcastically, holding her hands up in surrender. “I concede.”

When a sound came from one of the doors across from the couch, they both looked that direction, and Beverly sighed. 

“Sorry, she’s having a tough time right now,” Beverly said. Then, she took a deep breath, wound herself up to shout, “Alana!”

Some tutting, soft sounds, Bedelia wasn’t sure what to make of this unseen roommate of Bev’s, but then, Alana opened the door, peeked her head out, and went doe-eyed as she didn’t ask what was the matter. 

“Did you ever meet Bedelia?” Beverly asked, gesturing on the couch. 

This tiny Alana creature shook her head, and though Bedelia knew nothing about this girl, she somehow felt as if she should feel sorry for Alana, as if Alana were a dog in an ASPCA commercial. 

“We were roommates during first year,” Beverly gave. “She’s, you know.”

Alana’s eyes bugged even wider, and she said, “Oh! Alright.”

So much for _sworn to secrecy._ Bev had only found out about Bedelia and the Meadowlarks as a result of a joint dry-cleaning order Bev had been the one to pick up. It wasn’t Bedelia’s fault that a long, dark cloak was emblematic of something other than witchcraft here, but still, she hadn’t expected Beverly to tattle.

“Alana’s in the League too,” Beverly said, nodding. “How we met.”

Lovers League, the bane of Bedelia’s first-year existence. She wasn’t sure why the society still existed, given that most of its members merely shared class notes and studied together, but she’d watched as Bev went out to dinner with other League members, the weekend ski trips and the matching jackets many of them ordered and wore around campus, and she’d wondered why the Meadowlarks had seemed so appealing in comparison. After all, the League had wanted her, the Foxes too, but she didn’t think the League would help her advance beyond Silverleaf, and she wanted very little to do with animal entrails. But still, she’d had options, and she’d chosen the Meadowlarks, even when the Meadowlarks didn’t want to choose her. A major change in bylaws later, she was an initiate, and eventually, she became a member, the first female member of the Society, and the League, the Foxes, and even Scripture didn’t know what to do as a result. Sure, the process had been anonymous, but she felt the stares of others around campus, the ones who knew that the girl who always stuck with Clark and Andy but never seemed to date either of them must be the girl in the Meadowlarks. And what had granted her membership? Before Hannibal had arrived at the Alibi party, one guy had drunkenly asked her if her legs had been what had gotten her in. Thankfully, Luca had gotten in the guy’s face, but still, she hated that someone could ask her that question. She hated that she was being watched.

“Is everything going well in the League?” Bedelia asked, her spine straightening, her hands folding on her lap. About this subject of conversation, she would only ever be businesslike.

“Yes,” Alana said, nodding a little too quickly. “Psych exams coming up. Need to study.”

“You need to be analyzed by a psychologist in order to participate?”

“Oh! No,” Alana said, smiling softly. “Psychology exams. As in, for psychology classes.”

“Right,” Bedelia said, cheeks warming.

“Are you studying?” Beverly asked, and Alana nodded, and Beverly rolled her eyes in response. “Are you actually studying?”

Alana grimaced.

“Dude,” Beverly said.

“I’m taking a break.”

“How long has this break been?”

“That’s really none of your business.”

“Alana-”

“I like your skirt,” Alana said, looking at Bedelia. “It’s really cute.”

Bedelia looked down, reminding herself of which one she’d chosen to wear today - wool tweed, grey and warm, almost perfectly matching her stockings - and said, “Thank you.”

“Fashion design is one of Alana’s hobbies,” Beverly said.

Alana blushed, shook her head, clarified, “I just like to crochet. That’s all.”

Looking to Bedelia, Bev said, “You want normal? Let Alana show you her things. Her crochet things.”

Though Alana looked mortified, Bedelia didn’t want to tell Beverly her real reason for coming here, so she nodded, stood up, followed as Alana begrudgingly let her into one of the suite’s bedrooms. As Bedelia had expected, the rooms were small, but Alana had made the most of her space, a mirror and sparse makeup left on top of the dresser, an alarm clock sitting on the windowsill next to the blue-quilted bed, the desk clear save for a computer and a textbook but the wall above the desk covered in little notes. _Hand in English paper. Talk to Beverly about Saturday night. CALL WILL ASAP._ And next to the desk, there was a big basket full of yarn, and though Alana had clearly tried to study, she’d left a crochet hook, a ball of yarn, and some big craft she’d been making on her bed. No, Alana had most definitely not been studying for her psychology exams.

“I sell things online,” Alana said, sounding painfully self-conscious. “Mostly little toys. And blankets sometimes.”

She pulled two little crocheted toys from the basket, one looking like Hello Kitty and the other like Cinnamoroll. 

“I really like Hello Kitty,” Alana said, blushing. 

Though Alana acted so uncomfortable around Bedelia, Bedelia wished Alana could understand that, after being surrounded by boys who liked bloody meat, drastic experiments on human bodies, whiskey straight from the bottle, and calling women _bitches_ , Bedelia longed to sit atop this girl’s quilt and have Alana explain the Hello Kitty universe in painstaking detail. She didn’t consider herself a particularly feminine person, but after spending hours listening to men talk about economics, she longed to hear a female friend speak with equal - or oftentimes greater - education about handbags, down to places of manufacturing and types of couture stitching. She really, _really_ wanted to hear Alana talk about crocheting.

Standing in the doorway, Bev added, “You guys have something in common too.”

Bedelia furrowed her brow. Alongside her, Alana looked mortified.

“Boy problems,” Bev gave, as if the answer were obvious. “The short version: Alana and Will aren’t talking to each other right now, and it’s messing them both up, and meanwhile, Bedelia and Andy are, most likely, dealing with the fact that Andy’s a homo.”

Grimacing, Bedelia said, “Bev, that’s-”

“Entirely accurate,” Beverly said, not budging.

Bedelia sighed, shook her head. So, maybe she’d been figured out, but at least it wasn’t Andy. No, she needed to go to an initiation ritual tonight, and she had no desire to see Hannibal again, but more than that, she found that his comments had gotten under her skin. Though she figured that, if the Meadowlarks liked him, he must be a good liar, he had sounded so confused when she mentioned him using her for leverage. And he hadn’t realized that the party had been for screening initiates, making sure that the men - and this year, it was only men - the Society had selected as potential members were, in fact, worthy of the Society. All the while, Hannibal had seemed as if he knew nothing of the Meadowlarks, and though she wanted to stand her ground, she also wondered if she might be wrong.

“Look,” Bedelia gave. “No one is studying, and I think we all have things we want out of our minds. So, let’s all sit on the couch, and we can talk it out. Or talk about crocheting, or chemistry professors. And then, we can study.”

Bev shrugged, willing to agree. “Been too long, du Maurier.”

“Alright,” Alana gave.

So the three of them migrated to the couch, Alana’s crochet hook hosting half of a Chococat joining them, and Bev sat in that uncomfortable position that during first year she proudly self-described as _sitting gay,_ and Bedelia crossed her legs, and Alana bit her lip and she stuck her hook between two stitches. Yes, this was a proper place to discuss boy problems. Here, Bedelia could talk about her emotions and not feel as if she were a stupid, unimportant woman. Of course, Clark - and even to some degree Andy - would tell her to get over herself, but Beverly would see the nuance of the situation. And she had a gut feeling that Alana would be good at giving advice, even if she happened to be terrible at following her own advice. 

And maybe Bedelia would finally know what to do about Hannibal. And maybe, for once, she would like that outcome.

* * *

When Hannibal knocked on the Alibi’s front door, he wondered if anyone would come to greet him, the house being so big, the walls too thick for the sound to travel. But within moments, Maverick, the skier boy, opened up the door, ushered him in. The rest of the Society were sitting in the main room where they’d held the party, only now a number of ruby-upholstered couches were set up, a main meeting room of sorts. The piano he’d seen girls sitting on now held two candelabras, as well as a number of framed pictures. Though for the party the place had seemed old and unused, now the place seemed like a lived-in museum, Monet’s home turned into a tourist attraction. He still didn’t understand the purpose of this house, or whether or not members of the Society lived here.

The men were dressed casually, v-neck sweaters and khakis, no ties. Thankfully, he’d dressed to match. On a couch with Clark and Andy, Bedelia sat and held a half-drunk scotch, her crossed legs making her tweed mini skirt ride up. She was wearing a cashmere turtleneck that hugged her shoulders. When their eyes met, she looked at him with an exhausted kind of disdain. She didn’t want him here, but she wished that she didn’t care about him at all.

Clark stood up, smoothed out his pants, smiled at Hannibal. He’d had his hair cut, just barely. He looked like a Christmas card child and a scumbag simultaneously.

“Good to see you, friend,” Clark said, then slapped Hannibal’s shoulder twice; trying to fit in, Hannibal smiled convivially even though he wished Clark would go away. “Here, sit with the other initiates.”

Motioning for one of the more empty couches, Clark brought Hannibal over to the other initiates. A gaunt, red-haired boy Hannibal didn’t recognize sat to the left side of the couch, and at the other end of the couch was someone Hannibal recognized, someone well-known on campus, Jay Whitney. During orientation week, Jay, the treasurer for student government, gave a speech to incoming students, but it wasn’t a real speech so much as a fun, lighthearted kickoff to this new chapter in everyone’s lives. And Jay had a presidential smile, there was no other word to describe it, and warm, inviting eyes to match. When Jay smiled, he instantly gained the trust of others, and that trust seemed warranted based on who Jay was as a person, the president of the African-American Student Society and the person everyone expected to be elected president of the student government as soon as he became an upperclassmen. Though Jay didn’t know Hannibal, Hannibal - and everyone else in this room - very much knew Jay, but still, Jay sat so casually on the couch, the collar of his shirt perfectly starched, his sweater offering an expensive emblem on the lapel, his tie making him overdressed for the event but the coiffedness of him making everyone else seem underdressed in contrast. Sitting down next to Jay, Hannibal wondered if he himself looked disheveled by proxy.

“Now!” Clark clapped his hands together twice, looked around the room and sized up his subjects. “Bring out the NDAs!”

Suddenly, Hannibal noticed the three older men who had been sitting toward the back of the room, half-hidden by the piano. All three were dressed well, bespoke suits, gold cufflinks, and they came over to the couch holding files on clipboards, and when one clipboard was handed to Hannibal, then a pen, he realized that, yes, this was a real nondisclosure agreement. Were these men lawyers? The Society was listed as a licensed limited corporation, and the initiates were being given nondisclosure agreements. Skimming the document at first, Hannibal saw that the secrecy here wasn’t just a part of the Society’s lore; no, there would be legal ramifications if he spoke about what occurred at different meetings, even if he revealed who the other initiates, past or present, were. Should he look at the fine print? Apparently, he would be held solely responsible for any illegal activities he did in the name of the Society, and should he commit a crime on Society-owned properties - _Meadowlark Place of 220 Larson, Higgins House of Silverleaf College, and the Silverleaf Estate of 500 Sterling (‘The Alibi’)_ \- he would not receive legal assistance from lawyers associated with the Society, and he would be prompted to plead the Fifth rather than expose Society secrets. Was all of this legal? Though he knew that nondisclosure agreements could not ethically be used to cover up crimes, the Society had not asked him to keep quiet about committed crimes, but then again, the Society hadn’t been particularly specific about what should be kept silent either, other than membership and vague Society policies. He was hardly being asked to do anything at all, so of course these Meadowlarks weren’t violating any laws.

He signed because he wanted to sign. The gaunt boy handed his agreement in as well, but Jay insisted on reading each line, going page by page to ensure that this wasn’t a scam. Had Jay brought a knife? Hannibal kept his in a holster inside the waistband of his pants. Across the room, Bedelia looked down at her French manicure, seeming bored and ready to return home for the evening. He wondered how late this event would go.

Finally, Jay handed in his agreement, his signature halfheartedly left on the proper line. He even had the signature of a celebrity, all loopy but neat and universally recognizable. Then, as if on cue, the rest of the Society stood, like high school students when a class bell rang, and headed off in every direction, Andy toward the kitchen, some of the other boys toward the room where Hannibal had first met them, and Bedelia and Bedelia alone in the same direction in which she had led him during the party. Though a romantic part of him wondered if she wished for him to follow, her back remained toward him, and her shoulders were hunched, as if she were trying to make herself smaller. In the end, only Clark remained in the main room.

“Alright, boys,” he said, back to his theatrics. “It’s time for a field trip.”


End file.
